Cloud of Leaves
by A Dyslexic Writer
Summary: Hibari wasn't sure what Mukuro's end game was. Maybe he truly did just want him to protect Chrome after reincarnation. Not like it mattered. Regardless what that scheming bastard was up to, Hibari would still be Hibari. The Ninja World better be ready, because this Prefect won't let them get away with half the shit they were pulling before.
1. Chapter 1

Hibari Kyouya was satisfied.

He had not lived a normal life, nor had he ever really stopped to consider what normal was.

It's hard to imagine that life can get weirder when the starting point was being trained by the world's greatest martial arts master, who looked for all the world like a two-year-old and just so happens to be your grandfather. But from even those startling heights of absurdity, his life just continued to get crazier.

His forty years of life had been filed with all kinds of crazy shit. He had fought everything from illusionists and dog people all the way up to giant robots and a psychotic zombie plant man. He had traveled through time, established a secret international 'Disciplinary Committee' based in his old middle school in order to fight superpowered Mafiosos, became a top contender for the title of strongest man on the plant, and smacked an alien god in the face with his tonfas, and all of that before he turned sixteen.

He was happy, to have given his life to protect that and those which belonged to him.

But as he lay on top of the severed head of the fifteen-story tall wolf-like creature that had been summoned up from the pits of Helheim, and surrounded by the untold tens of thousands of other abominations he had killed, breathing his last as the poisoned air released by their corpses spread throughout his body, Kyouya realized he had no idea what the fuck was going on, or how it had gotten to this. It had something to do with that whiny electric using Herbivore with the hammer, a flaming goat man, and the half skeleton lady, but he just hadn't been paid enough attention to what they had been saying to really have a good grasp on the situation. The only thing that he knew was that they were after one of the people he had to protect, the Little Owl, Chrome, and that it was all that bastard Mukuro's fault… somehow. At least, that's how the Bucking Horse Herbivore had explained it to him.

"Hel was after My Chrome to get to the 'Six Paths of Reincarnation', the only means in which she could fully manifest from Helheim and restart Ragnarök, which I left with Chrome when I was pulled from my body." Mukuro's voice helpfully supplied. "Don't you ever pay attention?"

Despite everything, Hibari lifted his tonfa and threw it in the direction he felt the voice was in, probably costing him a few of the precious seconds worth of energy he had left.

"Fufufufu, you hadn't changed at all, have you? So quick to violence, and you never listen to your betters." Mukuro chuckled as Hibari lay dying.

More than twenty years after they had first met, they still hated each other. In fact, Hibari would go so far as saying that the Pineapple Bastard was the only person in the world who had pushed beyond simply irritating him and reached the level of actual hatred. Even when they had to work together, they never were allowed to meet face to face. Tsuna had Chrome be the one to provide all the information Mukuro and his lot had dug up to Hibari and his Foundation. The Sky Omnivore had thought that it would help keep the peace, though it only made things worse as Hibari became fond of the Little Owl and Mukuro became possessive. They would have probably killed each other a long time ago, regardless how hard Tsuna tried to keep the peace, if Mukuro hadn't gotten his soul ripped out by demons for overusing his Demon Rings.

Hibari just glared at the sky as his vision faded. "Did not even hell want you… Pineapple?" Hibari spat.

"I might not be able to escape my demons, but they can't contain me entirely. I still have a bit of King Yama's power left in me. Enough to give you one final farewell present, since hell isn't really big enough for the both of us." Mukuro said, before continuing his laugh. "You wished to be with My Chrome? Well then, you will have to take care of her. Make sure you find her quickly; in your next life, that is."

Pain shot up Hibari's spin and into his right eye, not that the man even flinched from the pain. He wouldn't give that damn Pineapple the satisfaction of seeing him so much as twitch.

"That should be enough to stop you from forgetting anything. Now hurry along. The sooner you die, the sooner you can start again. Fufufufu…"

* * *

"Hey kiddo, welcome to our shitty world." Maito Shitsuki said as she held her newborn child to her chest with one arm while holding up a cigarette with the other. "Maybe if we are lucky your father will live long enough to get back here and see you once in your life before he kicks the bucket."

She didn't sound too hopeful. She preferred to see herself as a realist. Being born in the Nara clan does that to a person. And after all the war and death she had seen in her short sixteen years of life, she felt that it only made sense to be a pessimist about it. The reason she agreed to marry early, and got herself knocked up, was so that she could escape the pointless death that awaited her. Even if children were a pain, being a young mom was better than being a corpse somewhere.

Not that she didn't love the man. Even if he was a hopeless idiot, there was some charm in the way that Toma had chased after her tirelessly since their first day at the academy together. Ten straight years of declarations of love, and him providing a shoulder to cry on when her teammates were killed, eventually tired her out. They had a battlefield marriage and he had gotten her pregnant on foreign soil. It had managed to get Shitsuki out of the warzone for the next few years, as child rearing was considered fairly important to the village, but Toma was still out there fighting. She just hoped he would pull through.

Second Shinobi World War, that's what they were calling it. Apparently, they just ignored all the worldwide wars that happened more than forty years ago. As if everything that happened during the Warring States Era didn't count. Funny how the First and Second Shinobi World Wars took up fifteen of those forty years so far. The Second has only been going on for four years, and Shitsuki wondered if it will be over before it is this little guy's turn to be fighting. These days, eight-year-olds were commonly being sent to the lines as genin. Some were as young as six.

What was even the point of making the Leaf Village in the first place? Maybe there just wasn't a point at all.

Shitsuki laughed to herself a bit, every time she looked up at the cliff with the faces of the three Hokages carved into it. They made them so damn big. Probably wouldn't be able to fit any more than seven or eight of them, and considering how fast the village goes through them, that cliff face was going to be full before a century goes by. Did the people who first started the tradition just assume that the village wasn't going to last more than a hundred years?

"You are going to have to grow up quick, my little Kyouya. The world isn't going to wait for you."

* * *

Shitsuki smiled as her two and a half-year-old son had to stand on his seat and lean all the way across the Shougi board in order to move his Lance piece forward, promoting it so that it now threatened both her Rook and Knight pieces.

It was a good move, but it wasn't good enough. Shitsuki had grown up a Nara, and even if she was exiled from the clan for marrying someone from a weak family without the elders having any say, she hadn't lost any of her skills when it came to Shougi. She knew her little boy would try something drastic as soon as she started to box in his Dragon Horse. He placed far to high of a value on the piece and gave up far too much control over the board for it.

"You still tunnel vision too much." She said before taking her own Bishop and sweeping it to the side so that it now threatened the child's Rook, with the Rook unable to move without exposing the King piece.

Kyouya scowled but said nothing as he moved a Knight in place. He might not have been able to save his Rook, but he would at least take the Bishop. He didn't realize he was giving up even more control of the board by doing so. He was good, incredible for his age, but he had a long way to go before he could face his momma. A few moves to go before checkmate.

Little Kyouya was so intently focused on the board that he didn't even notice when the front door to their little apartment opened and his father stepped in.

Shitsuki hadn't minded when she had been forced to move from the luxurious Nara Mansion into the small apartment building. She had always found cleaning the mansion a major pain and as a young member of a branch family, they had always pushed the task of spring cleaning onto her, the lazy assholes. If given the chance, she would have laughed in their faces. She had what they had always dreamed of, a slow lifestyle with few responsibilities. Even the responsibility of raising Kyouya was a cake walk. The boy was quiet and observant, neither needing or wanting much attention. He trained whenever she did and more often than not took long naps throughout the rest of the day when she would take a few easy D ranked missions and have a bit of extra beauty sleep of her own. She would call him the perfect little angel, if he wasn't such a monster.

"Kyouya-kun!" Toma shouted as he grabbed his son in a bear hug from behind, lifting the boy up out of his seat, knocking the chair over in the process, as he raised their child up to his chin, rubbing his bristly face against Kyouya's head and messing up the boy's straight hair.

Shitsuki giggled as her son struggled in the man's grip. With the twos faces so close together, she could just see the family resemblance. Kyouya might have inherited his father's straight black hair, but almost all of his other facial features came from his mother.

Thank goodness, as much as she loved the man, she was glad that her son didn't have his bushy eyebrows.

Having had enough of the man's attack, Kyouya kicked back his heel straight into the man's gut, causing Toma to gasp as the air was knocked from his lungs. Then with a show of strength, little Kyouya pried the man's arms away, dropping to the ground where he grabbed his father's leg and lifted it up, swinging the full-grown man and tossing him across the room like a ragdoll where he slammed his head against the wall.

The first time Shitsuki had seen her son's display of strength her eyes had popped out of her head, now she didn't even react, save to giggle as her boy said, "Don' c'owd me." His scowl and childish voice were just too adorable.

Toma chuckled as he got up off the ground rubbing the back of his head from where it had collided with the wall. "You sure do like to play rough, Kyouya-kun. Well, daddy isn't going to give up easy!" The young man tried to make a lung towards is child. Not that he made it far.

"Mul'i Sha'ow Clu'ching Ju'u." With just a single hand sign, Kyouya summoned up an array of twenty cords made of pure shadows which leaped up from the ground. Toma managed to dodge two of them, but as soon as one grabbed him, it was all over. Shadows as strong as steel cables wrapped themselves around the man, anchoring him to the ground.

"Ah, come on Kyouya, that isn't far." Toma whined as he tried his best to struggle against the binding technique.

Shitsuki watched the entire display with a sad smile as she sipped her tea.

The Shadow Clutching Jutsu was an A rank jutsu. One that she herself barely had time to even start practicing before she left the Nara Clan, and had still yet to really master. But Kyouya had managed to learn it and the rest of his mother's jutsu just by observing her practice and copying her actions. Not only that, he expanded on it, producing a cluster of shadows that were as strong as steel, instead of just one. The way that Kyouya could quickly manifest multiple shadows at once spoke of an unprecedented amount of chakra, more than even the form head of the Nara Clan ever had, and the child was only two years old.

Her husband hadn't even managed to get the Academy's basic jutsu down right and considered it impressive that his son could use any jutsu at all, and chalked it up to his wife's hard work in raising him for that year he had been stuck at the front lines. He lacked the proper scope to realize just what an A rank jutsu was. Performing just one of them would drain Shitsuki of nearly all of her Chakra.

However, the boy still had one weakness. "Checkmate." Shitsuki said casually.

Kyouya blinked and turned around to check the board. His king hadn't even been threatened, and it had been his turn. How was it that he could be in… He realized his mistake too late. With his focus drawn away, his jutsu failed.

"KYOUYA-KUN!" The man shaped missile shouted as he tackled the child to the ground again, his mother giggling at his expense as he tried to force the ape of a man off of him.

"You have a lot to learn, my son." Shitsuki said, shaking her head with amusement.

Kyouya was a lot less amused.

* * *

So, this was what it was like to be an Arcobaleno.

Kyouya thought back to Fon's description of what it had been like to suddenly be turned into a baby. How his reach and strength had decreased with his loss of height and mass. How he was constantly getting tired out from the most simple of exercise. How he had needed to learn to talk all over again without having him tripping over his own tongue.

Just like the Arcobaleno, Kyouya was still a powerful individual. His connection to the Bracelet of the Clouds exceeded even that of the first-generation cloud guardian, so even now, in a new life and without the jewel on him, he could still draw on some of the power of his piece of the Tri-ni-sette. He had roughly seven hundred thousand units of the highest quality Cloud Flame at his disposal. It was enough power to create a small mountain of Rolls. Yet if he exerted his power for more than five minutes, he felt the need to take a long nap. He slept for more than sixteen hours a day just to recover from his short training sessions. He seethed with indignation every time he had to get his mother to carry him in order to preserve his megger stamina.

Then there were the difficulties he had in speaking properly. Every time he tried to say 'crowd' it came out sounding like 'cloud'. As appropriate as 'don't cloud me' might have seemed, given his element, it irked him every time he said it. He didn't even try to say his old catchphrase, 'I'll bite you to death'. He remembered how Reborn's catchphrase had changed from 'chaos' to 'ciaossu' after his transformation. He would not allow the same thing to happen to him.

Well, at least his condition wasn't going to last for thirty years like his grandfather's. It wouldn't be long before his stamina and speech improved, and he'd be back up to full strength eventually, as soon as he could find an amplifier that could withstand his flames. Surely one had to exist in this world, where the manipulation of one's Ki was commonplace. Or he assumed that it was common enough. His parents didn't seem like anything special.

He didn't hate his parents. Even if they were both Herbivores without any shame, they were at least not the type of herbivores that scrapped and cried or got in the way. His mother was almost always calm and saw the world without any sort of rosy tint obscuring her judgment. She understood her abilities and worked within them without putting herself in any unnecessary risk or causing trouble for others. Truly a herbivore, but one so aware of themselves that Kyouya felt more impressed than disgusted.

As for his father… the man was an idiot. He reminded Kyouya of that idiot boxer, Sasagawa. A man who tried to overcome his own herbivoreness through sheer force of will, training, and a complete lack of regard for reality. And while annoying as all hell, Sasagawa had been one of the closest things that Kyouya had had to a friend, outside of Roll, the Hibirds, and his second in command, Kusakabe. While the two of them fought constantly, and the Sun Guardian had refused to stop crowding him, he hadn't hated the man. Just found him to be annoying.

What was more strange was while his mother was fully aware of just how out of the ordinary Kyouya was, she didn't seem to care much at all, and his father seemed oblivious to the fact that his son was at all different from anyone else, even after being thrown by the two-year-old boy on multiple occasions.

What strange people. Like the kind who used to gather around the Sky Omnivore. Kyouya hoped that the Omnivore hadn't rubbed off on him. The last thing he wanted was to be crowded by irritating Herbivores.

Kyouya was eating a simple microwaveable meal with his family, as his mother didn't know anything about cooking, and was doing his best to ignore the fact that he was sitting in a child's booster seat, when his father had an announcement.

"Oh I just remembered! There's going to be a graduation party this weekend for Dai's son, Gai." Toma said with cheer.

"Graduation party? But Gai only entered the Academy two years ago." Shitsuki said with a disappointed sigh. Kyouya's eyebrows went up at the word 'Academy'. There was a school? He supposed that should have been obvious, but it hadn't really occurred to him before. "Why is everyone always in such a rush to leave the Academy, would staying for five years really kill him? Honestly, I would think Dai of all people would understand that you shouldn't rush these things. What is he thinking?"

"Sw…sweetie, you're supposed to be happy for Gai. After failing his first entrance exam he really knuckled down hard and managed to not only get accepted, but then graduate in just two years. He worked extremely hard to get people to recognize him." Toma said nervously. Kyouya's eye twitched when his father used the 'E' word.

"And why should he care about recognition!" Shitsuki snapped back, causing the man to flinch. "If he managed to get strong enough to graduate in just two years, then they should have just left him in for the whole five and continued to train him. You don't get stronger in the real world, you get stronger by training. I will never understand people obsessions with pushing themselves into becoming ninja earlier and earlier."

"It… would be a shame to waste all that youth…" Toma mumbled, knowing damn well he was never going to win an argument against his wife.

"Then they should stop sending their young to die before their ready. Five years is too short as it is, but two, that's just…" Shitsuki ranted, only to be interrupted by her son.

"Okaa-san." Kyouya said, getting the woman's attention. "I wanna join 'e Aca'emy."

Shitsuki sent her husband a look as if to say, 'now look what you've done', before she turned back to her baby boy with a soft expression. "Sorry Kyouya, but you are too young for starting the Academy."

"Huh? There isn't an age requirement, you just have to pass the entrance exam." Toma said in a confused manner, earning a look that could curdle milk from his wife, which caused him to pale. Kyouya just looked at his mother expectantly.

"While there isn't an age requirement, if you go to the academy, you won't be allowed to have your afternoon naps anymore. Are you willing to give up cloud watching and afternoon naps?" Shitsuki said, trying to persuade her son not to go. She was disappointed when Kyouya nodded that he would.

"There's no harm to be had in just letting him take the entrance exam, is there?" Toma asked, scratching his head in confusion.

"There is a lot of harm that can be…" Shitsuki mumbled, but then stopped and sighed. "I suppose its bound to happen sooner or later." She then smiled at Kyouya. "Alright, you can take the entrance exam, but I want you to promise me one thing. Promise me that no matter what people say, you won't graduate early, and you won't jump straight into the ANBU either. You will stay at the Academy for the full five years. Okay?"

"I 'romise." Kyouya said with a nod of his head. He didn't know what the ANBU was, but he really had no intention of graduating early.

"I will hold you to that young man." Shitsuki said. "We missed the sign update for this year though, so you are going to have to wait for the next school years. Do you understand?"

Kyouya nodded. "Ru'es abou' joining 'imes. Have 'o wai'."

He could wait a year, his teeth should have finished growing in by then and he wouldn't had difficulties speaking clearly, but soon after that it would begin. He would start to rebuild his organization. The Disciplinary Committee would rise again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Fanfic, no money involved.**

* * *

Mitarashi Anko was nerves. It was her first day of school and she had only barely scrapped by the entrance exam.

Glancing out around the classroom, she hoped to see at least one familiar face, but of course she didn't. Nearly all of the students at the academy were from already established ninja families. A first-generation girl like her was a rarity. The entrance exam itself was set up for the sole purpose of discouraging newcomers to the ninja community. Without parents who were familiar with how the system was set up and could teach their kids what would be on the tests. Not only would you need to know how to read and write, but you also needed to be able to channel enough chakra to break the test seal and know all the hand signs by heart. There was little chance that a five-year-old would be capable of passing without at least a year of special education.

The funny thing was, the Leaf was considered progressive in respect to how accessible the Academy was, as in other Hidden Villages you couldn't get in unless you already knew at least one Nanjutsu or Genjutsu, limiting it to only those born to established clans.

Seeing all the other children, dressed in nicer clothes than her and happily chatting with each other about their respective clans, Anko couldn't help but to feel out of place. She was just the daughter of a tea shop owner who was told how to prepare for the test and awaken her chakra by one of the customers who had taken a liking to her. She didn't know a single jutsu, or how to fight. She didn't belong here.

Then she saw something curious. A small child, only three years old, sitting by himself in the corner of the room. He was the youngest in the class, though not by much, as there were three four-year-old children also in their class. It was really his isolation that made him stick out. The boy's eyes were closed, and he seemed to be napping.

At first, she thought he might be a part of the famous Inuzuka Clan, as there was a small animal perched on top of his head, but on closer inspection it didn't look like a dog. Actually, it seemed to be a baby hedgehog, one small enough to fit in the palm of Anko's hand, though the quills that grew out of its body look like tiny daggers.

Anko couldn't help but to feel slightly bitter towards the boy, as her mind made him the personification of everything wrong with the system. He was probably the son of some important family who could afford private tutors and got special privileges during the examination. His parents probably had him placed in school early just so that they could have bragging rights about how smart their little brat was, and the teachers were probably family friends who would give him good grades even if he just slept through all their class.

It was not far. Life was just not far. She had to struggle really hard for an entire year training by herself, just to barely make the cut, yet the other kids got a free ride just because they were born into good families.

"Alright you brats, everyone take a seat!" Said an older ninja who entered the room. The man was around twenty-six and was carrying a clipboard, so it didn't take a genius to realize that this was going to be their instructor.

Not wanting to get on the teacher's bad side on the very first day, Anko quickly found the closest evaluable chair. Just as her luck would have it, it was the chair right next to the sleeping kid. Though after the racket the teacher made, the boy wasn't sleeping any more. The boy's right eye was open, and he was glaring at the people who dared to sit next to him. Anko was surprised by the amount of venom a child that size could put into a stare. It was only through pure stubbornness that she just huffed in response and turned her head away.

The teacher looked over the list of names and then up at the student. "Good, looks like everyone's here. Since we're all going to have to put up with each other until graduations, lets get some introductions out of the way. I'll start us off and then I want you all to introduce yourselves going by rows, right to left. I'm Uchiha Tenko, from the Uchiha Clan, I'll be your instructor."

Anko groaned. She should have guessed from his black hair and eyes, and his stuck-up expression, that the man was an Uchiha. The Military Police Clan was among the most stuck up of all the clans, and pretty infamous among the civilians for the way they pushed them around in the name of security. They were the most elitist of the elites, earning the distaste of even other ninja clans because of how stuck up they were, acting as if they had the god given right to judge everyone else. While the Military Police was technically open for applications, no one but Uchihas were ever let in. Everyone complained about them, but in the end, they just accepted that the Uchihas did more good than harm.

They were a strong bloodline with natural advantages over everyone else, on top of the advantages provided by their wealth, clan knowledge and political influence. Without them, the Leaf Village wouldn't even exist. But that didn't give them the right to be assholes about it.

One after another, her classmates introduced themselves, giving their names and the name of their clan, until finally it was Anko's turn. "I'm Mitarashi Anko, and… I'm not from a Ninja Clan." She said, trying her best to keep her voice loud and level in order to hide her fear and embarrassment.

"Oh, a first generation huh?" The Uchiha said with a smirk. "Well, try not to inconvenience the rest of the class too much before you drop out." Anko sat back down as the teacher snickered at his own joke, her hands were clenched together into fists and her jaw was clamped shut.

Screw this guy. She'd show him. She wouldn't drop out. She would become the best ninja there was. She remembered how happier her mother and father had been when she had managed to pass entrance exam. She wasn't going to let them down. She didn't care how hard she had to work.

"Hey short stuff, its your turn for introductions!" The teacher called out to the small boy.

The boy didn't stand up, when he gave his introduction, he just looked over in the direction of the rest of the class. "Maito Kyouya. Crowd me and I'll bite you to death." The boy said calmly before looking away again.

There were a few whispers around the classroom, which Anko initially took as proof of her original assumption that the boy was from some kind of privileged family, until she actually started to listen to what they were saying.

"Maito, isn't that the loser family that's never produced a first-rate ninja?" "I heard it was a family of nothing but genin." "Ninjas who can't use proper ninjutsu can hardly be considered ninjas at all." "How did someone from a family like that get into the Academy early?" "The kid has attitude; I'll give him that." "It's so cute, the way he wants to be taken seriously."

"Seem like someone is in a hurry to remain a genin their entire lives." The teacher added his own insult, earning giggles from the rest of the class.

Anko was shocked at the vicious words, spoken loud enough for the boy in question to easily hear. Even when she had done her introduction the class had barely more than snickered. She felt bad about how she had assumed that he was a spoiled brat before… a more than a little guilty for being happy about it. Happy that perhaps she wasn't alone in this. Maybe the two of them could even be friends. She had always wanted a cute little brother.

"Hey… um…" Anko started, trying to think of a way to break the ice.

"Hn…" Kyouya's eye cracked open and he stared at her for a moment. "Be quiet, or I'll bite you to death."

Anko bristled before clicking her tongue at the boy and turning her head away. That snobby little brat, she hoped he tripped over his own feet. What was she thinking, trying to make friends with someone like him. 'Not cute. Not cute at all.'

Kyouya returned to his restful state and Anko did her best to ignore him as well. Though if she had been paying more attention, then she might have noticed that the hedgehog on the boy's head continued to stare at her, with silver eyes that matched its owner's. It sniffed at the air before letting out a low, sad purr.

* * *

For a moment, just one, Kyouya thought that it might have been her. The hair style was the same, and it was of a purplish color, if more faded than it had been on his Little Owl. But it hadn't been her. Chrome would have recognized him in an instant after seeing Roll, not to mention is introduction.

Besides, his Little Owl had never been one to speak in front of groups, even if prompted, and she would have never been so quick to anger. She had been a true Omnivore, one of two that Kyouya had ever met, and it took a lot to anger an Omnivore. Though once they were angered, Omnivores were a sight to behold. A force capable of moving the world. Mukuro himself had admitted towards the end of his life that Chrome's raw power surpassed his own, even with his seven lifetimes worth of experience.

No, it had not been her. Looking more carefully, Kyouya was even willing to say that the two girls looked nothing alike. Chrome's hair had been a deeper, glossier color. It was the same purple as her eye, which shined when it caught the light. Her features had been softer, and her mouth had been small with full lips. His Little Owl had had a presence like the mist under a clear sunny sky, mesmerizing. Kyouya felt a small twinge of regret as his hope of having found her was quickly snuffed out.

He had not forgotten how that damned Mukuro told him to find Chrome. However, he knew better than to look for her.

Chrome was a master of the Mist Flame. She would not draw attention to herself. She could disguise herself as anyone or anything, with genjutsu so powerful that they even showed up on cameras. Even after all his personal training to deal with illusionists, Kyouya would struggle to see through hers, even when he knew she was there. She eventually reached the point where she didn't need to eat or sleep, because she could just fool not only her own body but the world itself into thinking that she had. Trying to find her was a fool's errand. The best he could hope for was for her to find him. He had to make a big enough splash that she could see the ripple from wherever it was that she was hiding in this world.

…Granted, Mukuro might have just been fucking with him and she might not have been in this world at all. If so, not even hell would be safe for that Pineapple bastard.

"Now that introductions are done, I am going to be leading you all to the school's private training ground for a quick assessment. Nothing fancy, just a quick one on one to establish where you are and what needs improving." The Herbivore Uchiha said. He tried to keep his expression casual, but Kyouya could see through it. He had seen that same look on a hundred other Herbivores who believed themselves to be above the rest of their kind. Those who would disturb the peace and try to take advantage of others. The man was scum, and he was about to do what scum did best, to children no less.

Well, if he wanted a one on one fight, then Kyouya was more than willing to oblige him. Even since Dino, anyone considering themselves to be Kyouya's combat instructor triggered an itch in the Cloud Guardian.

The three-year-old Cloud could not help himself, and a hungry grin spread across his face. Roll to started to purr in anticipation, its bladed quills clicking together as it shivered in excitement with Kyouya's growing blood thirst.

It was time to discipline this 'teacher'. Kyouya was going to bite him to death.

* * *

"We're going to be going in alphabetical order of your given names, starting with Shimura Akane." Their Uchiha instructor said, to which Anko inwardly whimpered, wishing her mother hadn't named her after the red bean paste used in making the shop's sweets. She tried to remember if there was anyone else with a name that started with the letter 'A' that might come before her, but she hadn't really been paying attention when everyone was giving their introductions. She had been too focused on her own nervousness to care.

This time, Anko watched much more intently as Akane walked up to the teacher, who was more than double the girl's height. Maybe if she just did her best to copy this girl's movements then everything would be alright.

She almost wished she had closed her eyes instead. While not as fast as some of the adult ninja's she had seen, Akane's moves were a lot faster than a normal five-year-old girl. She'd clearly had prior instruction on how to use chakra in order to increase one's strength. She could jump a whole three feet off the ground to try and kick at the Uchiha instructor's chest, and at one point she backed up in order to use a water jutsu. It had all the power and impact of throwing a water balloon, was about the size of the girl's tiny fists, and wasn't even close to being on target, but it was still a jutsu.

Thinking back, the Shimura clan was super big shot name. It shouldn't have come as a surprise that one of its members was taught before they ever came to school. It wasn't unusual for children from top ninja clans to start their training at the age of three, so she probably had two whole years of training under her belt.

On the instructor's part, he only made observations as he easily stepped out of the way of blocked all of the girl's attacks.

"I think I've seen enough. Not bad. Though I suppose it is as to be expected from someone of such a distinguished clan lineage." The Uchiha said as he signaled for the girl to stop.

"Thank you for the lesson, sensei." Akane said a little breathlessly, though Anko thought she might have heard some bitterness in the girl's voice. Anko didn't know what the girl had to be bitter about, she did amazingly. All of the other students were clapping for her… save for Kyouya, who was standing to the side alone, yawning with boredom.

"Alright, seeming like your next, Civilian Girl." The Uchiha said. His mouth twitched with amusement as he said it.

"Yes, sensei." Anko said, doing her best not to swallow or pout. She didn't want the man to known just how unsure of herself she was.

Anko accelerated her breathing in order to increase the circulation of oxygen in her system, put up her fists and bent her legs, all in accordance to the short lessons she had received from her family's costumers. Opening up her charka flow, she lunged forward as best as she could and threw her first punch.

She hadn't gone as far as she had expected and the teacher only had to lean back in order for that first punch to miss, but Anko quickly followed up with a second… only for her world to come crashing down around her.

The moment her left hand had left the ready position, the teacher had struck her hard in the face, knocking her to the ground. She lifted a hand up to her stinging jaw, before looking up at the teacher in confusion. He had hit her hard in the face. Tears came to the girl's eyes in response to the shock more than the pain itself.

The Uchiha just stared down at her with a smug look. "What? It's only natural that I strike you when you let down your guard. This is training after all." The man said in a condescending tone. "If you can't take it, then just run on home to your mommy, because you aren't good enough for ninja training."

Anko clenched her teeth, only causing her jaw to hurt even more, but she did get back up to her feet and attacked the man again.

Again and again he would hit her, trip her, kick her. Each time she went down he would insult her, insult her parents. Each time she would get back up, fueled by her anger. Her head hurt, her legs hurt, and her arms hurt, but she refused to just give up. She kept going until he used the back of his hand.

Anko's head rang as the metal plate on the ninja's fingerless gloves came into contact with her temple. She could hardly hear the other students gasps of shock though all the noise in her head. The girl shivered at the feel of blood dripping down from her forehead, past her cheek and to her chin. As her vision filled with spots she had to struggle not to throw up.

"Herbivore…" A high pitch voice said right next to her, causing Anko to rotate her head up in surprise. Kyouya was standing between her and the instructor, his little fists clenched as he stood in a fighting stance. The Uchiha, who had been right in front of Anko a moment ago, was a few feet further back, surprise written on his face as he took in the small boy. "For your unacceptable behavior, I will bite you to death."

Then the boy rushed forward and Anko witnessed something that she would carry with her for the rest of her life.

* * *

Uchiha Tenko had once had a promising future ahead of him. That is, until he got brick walled from a promotion at his previous job in the Military Police due to complaints made by the civilian population about his 'unacceptable behavior'. After that, he was placed on an open-ended probation and more or less had to take a job as a teacher at the Academy, since the council wouldn't give him any missions outside the village while he was on probation.

He had once been recommended for becoming a Jounin, and while he didn't get the promotion, he was still no joke when it came to close quarters combat.

So how the hell was it that he was getting his ass handed to him by a three-year-old?

Tenko had just been finishing up with the civilian brat when the Maito kid lost his shit and attacked him. And while it might have been a sneak attack, Tenko wasn't going to deny there was some serious power behind the kid's punch. Enough to make his arm tingle from the impact of blocking it.

After that, the snot nosed brat said what he probably thought was a cool one liner and then started to attack Tenko relentlessly. The brat was slipper, managing to get out of the way of the ninja's attacks while simultaneously attacking with such a varied tempo that the Uchiha was having a hard time reading the kid's movements. It seemed like for every two hits that Tenko was able to block or avoid, a third got in, hitting him hard in the gut or in his legs. The boy was just too fast. Every time he thought he would get a hit, or dodge the punch, the boy sped up just enough to dodge or make contact.

None of it made any sense, not until Tenko switched on his sharingan in order to keep up with the kid's attacks and found something he had never expected from a three-year-old.

A genjutsu. The boy had placed a genjutsu on him that was messing with his perception of the kid's movements. While not a complex illusion, it seemed so natural that the Uchiha had not even noticed it until the sharingan had seen through it.

Where had such a young kid, and a Maito at that, learned to use a genjutsu?

Didn't matter. Without the smoke and mirrors, and with his sharingan activated, Tenko could easily keep track of the brat's movements.

The man smirked as he caught onto the boy's wrist, stopping his punch in midflight and holding the boy up in the air. "No so tough n…" Tenko had started to gloat, expecting the boy to be stunned to find that his genjutsu had been seen through… only he wasn't. Without missing a beat, the snot nose brat pulled himself in using the captured arm… and bit down on the Uchiha's hand hard enough to piece the cloth of the fingerless gloves and draw blood.

Tenko swore loudly, trying to swat at the boy with his free hand, but the child had already slipped out of his grip and blocked the admittedly weak attack, pushing himself away from the instructor.

The ninja never even had a chance to recollect himself before the little monster was on him again, lunging forward with such speed that the little hedgehog that had up until now been clinging to the boy's head lost its grip and fell off. With the sharingan speeding up his reflexes, it wasn't hard for Tenko to grab onto the boy's arm again, this time also grabbing the child by the hair to stop him from biting again. "Look here you little brat. I've had…"

The child lifted his free hand to his captured one and started making a hand signal. "Shadow Clutching Jutsu." The Uchiha was shocked as the boy's shadow rose up out of the ground, grabbing onto the fallen hedgehog that had cruelled up into a ball and started to expand, growing from being the size of the child's fist into what looked like a large black basketball covered in spikes.

The shadow swung the spiked ball around like a flail and it was only the sluggish nature of the jutsu that gave the Uchiha the time to let go of the boy and jump out of the way.

The spiked ball passed by where the man's legs had been and smacked into the ground with a heavy thud, breaking the concrete. If the ninja had been one second slower his legs would have been broken and probably cut to ribbons, crippling him for life. But the thing at the forefront of his mind was something else entirely.

"You're not a Maito at all. You're a Nara." The Uchiha said, having recognized the Shadow Jutsu as being one of the Nara's signature jutsu.

"Hn." Was the child's only response as he started to make hand signs again. "Shadow Imitation Jutsu." His shadow spread out towards Tenko, who retreated away from the advancing patch of darkness to stay out of range of the jutsu.

The Nara's jutsus had four main weaknesses. The speed of the shadows was relatively slow and could be evaded by aware ninja, the range of the jutsus were short, in order to manipulate their shadows well they had to keep their feet planted on the ground, and they were rather costly. By keeping his distance, the Uchiha could wait it out until the boy ran out of chakra.

However, every time the ninja moved out of the effective range, the boy would cancel his jutsu and pursue, before reactivating it again. Slowly driving the ninja back towards the corner of the room, where he would be trapped.

Seeing this, the Uchiha tried to stop the boy by throwing Kunai at him, but the child simply batted the throwing knives out of the air without any concern at all. He made it look easy. With his back against the wall and shadows moving in, the ninja made a snap decision, running up the wall and jumping over the boy's head in order to avoid being trapped.

Turning back to the child, he expected the boy to keep coming, but the child stopped and was just looking at the Uchiha was his narrowed eyes. "What's the matter, kid? Getting tired?" The man laughed, wanting to keep the brat going just a little longer, until he ran himself out of stamina.

It was only the sound of ripping stone and his sharingan eyes that allowed him to dodge the next attack. He twisted his body and ducked forward just enough so that the spiked ball from before, now flying through the air and covered in purple flames, only cut him across the shoulder rather than taking off his entire arm. The man gave a hiss of pain as the blade ripped a jagged hole in his left arm.

The spiked ball deflated in midflight, turning back into the tiny hedgehog which the boy easily caught. "Well done, Roll." The child said, petting the creature's head while looking at Tenko with a condescending smile.

"You… Die you little brat!" The Uchiha shouted, quickly starting a sequence of hand signs of his own and taking a deep breath. "Fire Release: Fireball Jutsu!"

The fireball was over six feet in diameter and moved quickly towards the child. But rather than trying to get out of the way, the boy simply tossed the little hedgehog forward. The creature yet again rolled up into a ball and began to expand… and expand… and expand. The tiny little hedgehog turned itself into a massive boulder that was over fifteen feet across, blocking the fireball as if it was nothing.

Tenko stared at the massive black spiked ball in shock, until it began to turn. In a manner similar to the Akimichi clan's Human Bullet Tank Jutsu, the ball started to expel purple flames, using them to start to spin. The ball quickly gained speed and moved towards the ninja, who had to jump out of the way to avoid being squished.

Tenko watched as the ball flew passed him, tearing the ground apart as if moved across the training grounds before starting to make a wide turn to come back at him.

This was getting out of hand. Forget keeping face, Tenko needed to get out of there.

But for some reason, his body wouldn't listen to a thing he said.

"Shadow Imitation Jutsu."

Tenko gasped as dark blue flames appeared on the ground, slowly dispersing to reveal the shadows that had been hidden underneath the genjutsu. The ninja was forced to get to his feet and face the tiny boy who had done this to him.

The little monster looked at him with a bored expression, before giving a small huff and turning around, forcing Tenko to do the same.

Tenko was forced to watch as the spiked ball came barreling towards him. "No… no… NO!" Tenko shouted as his arms raised themselves, as if welcoming the end.

"Be bitten to death, Herbivore."

* * *

**Hibari is about 10 years older than Naruto.**

**PS. Surprisingly enough, both Sakura's parents are actually ninja. So she didsn't sucked because she wasn't born into a ninja family. She sucked because that ninja family doesn't have any signature jutsu.**


	3. Chapter 3

'There is a monkey in my seat.' Kyouya thought to himself as he stared daggers at the elderly man who vaguely reminded him of the Ninth Vongola Boss.

After he had dealt with the red-eyes black Herbivore, he had been brought to a room at the top of the Academy. It was a nice place, plenty of windows to let in the natural light, a balcony for watching the clouds go by, and what looked to be a very nice and comfortable armchair behind a large oak desk. It wasn't a couch, but with his body as small as it was, Kyouya would still be able to lie down in it. He was more than prepared to declare the room to be his and take a well-deserved nap.

There was only one problem. The seat was already occupied.

There was the temptation to try and bite this elderly man to death in order to claim what should have been his, only Kyouya was already kind of sleepy after his light exercise earlier. So while the chair did look very nice, he wasn't prepared to fight the old man over it.

Besides, it wouldn't be right to bite someone to death when they hadn't done anything to irritate him besides giving him a short wooden stool instead of a comfy armchair.

At first, Kyouya had assumed that the man had been the Academy's Principal. But the person who led him to the office had referred to the man as 'Hokage-sama'.

Kyouya didn't know much about the culture of the village, but he knew that the Hokage was supposed to be the strongest ninja in the village. Part of Kyouya wanted to fight him for that reason alone, but he understood the fact that his body was still small. Beating a worthless Herbivore like the one with the red-eyes was one thing, but fighting a carnivore in his condition might be a little much. Besides, he really was sleepy. Damn his childish body's low physical stamina.

But why was the Hokage's office at the school to begin with? And why was Kyouya brought directly to him? He wasn't the President of the Disciplinary Committee, was he? Was his hat the symbol of being the school's prefect?

Suddenly, Kyouya really wanted that hat. It seemed perfect for blocking the sun while you are taking a nap.

Maybe he would be fighting the old man after all.

"So young man, would you mind telling me why you felt the need to critically wound your teacher?" The Hokage asked Kyouya after glancing over the pictures of what had happened. Kyouya didn't see any reason to lie to the man, so he simply told him the truth.

"He irritated me."

* * *

Sarutobi Hiruzen was not having the best day. It had started with a council meeting where he and Shimura Danzou yet again couldn't agree on anything.

Hiruzen sometimes wished that Danzou wasn't such a damn ninja about everything. While they all saw the next Ninja World War on the horizon, since the 'peace treaty' was a worthless piece of shit that didn't solve anything, Danzou's idea for what to do about it was to start murdering key individuals in the other nations before the war could even start. The man just couldn't wrap his head around a concept as novel as trying to stop the war from happening. You know, that thing that is the opposite of murdering beloved leaders in cold blood and breaking peace treats.

Was hoping for a peaceful solution really that bad?

After two whole hours of subtly calling one and other a 'close minded fool', the meeting came to an end when a runner came to tell them that a three-year-old boy had just beaten an upper tier chunin within an inch of his life. It took a while to understand that it wasn't a joke, but after pictures were brought in they canceled the meeting. Homura and Koharu breathed sighs of relief as they went off to do something more productive with their day as Hiruzen returned to his office… with Danzou following behind him.

Well, he supposed Danzou had every right to want to get involved with this. He just hoped that the man would just be forward with his intentions rather than scheming as usual. The man had already laid claim to young Kakashi just the previous year, after the child's chunin exam, and Hiruzen had hardly heard from the boy since.

After arriving back at his office, he glanced over some more pictures taken by the cameras in the training grounds of the fight, as well as some close up ones from when the medical ninjas were moving the poor bastard. Torn up left arm, three large puncture wounds and nearly every bone in his body broken from the shoulders on down. It seemed like a miracle that the man avoided getting any of his vitals hit. Though considering his position was being controlled by the boy using Shadow Imitation Jutsu, it might not have been an accident at all. This was assuming a lot about the skills of the child, but considering what he already did, it wasn't impossible.

However, what none of the images he had been handed explained to him was the simple question of 'why?'.

"He irritated me."

That was it. Hiruzen waited for the boy to elaborate, but that was all he got. He sighed and being to rub his eyes. "Kyouya-kun…"

"Maito." The boy said. "I gave you no permission to use my given name."

"…Maito-kun. You can't go around attacking people just because they irritate you." Hiruzen said slowly.

"Hn." The child scoffed at his gentle reprimands. Hiruzen briefly wondered if the boy had any idea who he was, or his status within the village. If he did, it didn't seem as if the boy particularly cared. This wasn't usually the way kids acted around the Hokage.

Hiruzen glanced over at Danzou, who seemed just as lost for what to do as he was. Dealing with children wasn't exactly their specialty. Nor was interrogation when torcher was not on the table. They could try intimidation, but that didn't seem possible. "Perhaps we need to wait for the boy's parents to arrive." Danzou suggested.

Hiruzen sighed, leaning back in his armchair. He was just shy of fifty, but he already felt too old for this. "Today is your first day of school isn't it, Maito-kun. What are your thoughts on the academy so far?" Hiruzen said, seeing if some small talk would open the kid up a bit.

The child sat there, thinking about it for a moment before responding. "Needs more discipline. Also, architecture is bad."

"I suppose it is a rather ugly building, isn't it? But it serves its purpose." Hiruzen chuckled slightly worried about the comment about 'discipline'. He waited for a few moments, hoping that the kid would give him a little more to work with, but was getting nothing. "So… what do you do for fun?"

Kyouya narrowed his eyes at the man, clearly not amused.

Luckily for the old men, a knock came at the door, signaling the arrival of the child's mother. "You made it here quickly." Hiruzen commented, glancing down at the boy's documents to get the woman's name.

Shitsuki, now that was a name he hadn't seen in a couple of years. She'd grown up quite a bit. He didn't know she had a son, and with Toma-kun too. So she finally stopped running away from the energetic boy's advances. Good for them, though it was unlikely that the Nara Clan would have been happy about it, seeing as she was supposed to be engaged to their heir. Given that the child's name is Maito and not Nara, the clan head must have been removed from the clan. Explains why he had never heard any of the Nara's complaining about a handful of a child.

As all the people in the Leaf Village were like family to the old man, he did his best to be approachable and keep tabs on everyone. He might not have always been able to do so, or to help them when they were in need, since it was hard to play godfather to tens of thousands of ninjas, but just showing that someone cared often times made all the difference to some people.

"I made sure to be nearby today, just in case." Shitsuki said, taking in a deep breath. "So, what is the damage like? Since Hokage-sama became involved, I'm guessing it wasn't on the scale of a normal child's fight… the teacher must have gotten involved then."

"Yes, the teacher was involved. The man in currently in transient to the local hospital so we don't have a full report, though by eyeballing the damage, I'd say he will be crippled for life." Hiruzen said, putting the pictures down on the table.

"What!?" The mother gasped in surprise as she looked over the images. "Kyouya-kun has only ever left people brushed and restrained. He's never gone this far before. Kyouya-kun, why did you do this?"

The boy glanced up at his mother who looked down at him with a confused expression. "He irritated me." Hiruzen sighed at the child's response, but it seemed that the boy's mother was much more used to dealing with the boy's unusual answers.

"Yes, I know, but what did he do to irritate you?" The mother asked patently.

"Besides just being an arrogant Herbivore, the red-eyed Herbivore assaulted and injured a Small Animal under the pretense of training." Kyouya responded, using rather big words for a three-year-old. Though it wasn't the big ones that left the old men baffled, it was how it all seemed to be used incorrectly.

"By 'arrogant herbivore' he means a bully or thug, and 'small animal' is how he refers to a child." Shitsuki translated for the men. "He has an unusual way of categorizing people. He says that he attacked the man because he was assaulting one of the other children."

"I see." Hiruzen said, scratching his chin in contemplation.

"He said they were doing a training exercise. It's likely the boy over reacted, isn't it? Ninja training is rather physical." Danzou reasoned. "Unbelievably talented as the child is, he's too dangerous to be allowed to remain in the Academy if he is going to lash out like this. He'll have to be separated from the others."

"Hn…" Hiruzen hummed, giving a short nod. Shitsuki looked worried, though Kyouya himself didn't even seem to be listening to them. Hiruzen was inclined to believe that they would need to find another means to reign in the young boy, outside of the Academy, until another knock came at the door and the Hokage's secretary peeked in.

"Hokage-sama, two of the children who were at the incident this morning want to speak you." The woman said, concern written on her face. "I think you should see this."

"Let them in then. Perhaps we will get a bitter telling of what happened from someone else." The Hokage said with a nod. The woman went back before letting the two children in.

"Akane?" Danzou said, recognizing the young girl of his clan. Hiruzen had forgotten that the girl had joined the school that day. She was the granddaughter of Danzou late younger sister. Would explain why the man was so adamant about getting involved immediately and removing the boy from the class, rather than his usual style of playing the long game and trying to lure the child away in the shadows. Cold hearted as Danzou became after his father died in battle, all men have their weak spots. He must have kept track of who the girl's teacher was going to be and noticed that the boy was in her class.

"Elder-sama, Hokage-sama. We wanted to make sure you didn't punish Maito-san without knowing what the Uchiha was doing." Akane said as she helped along another girl.

Hiruzen almost groaned when he saw the girl. It couldn't have been more then twenty minutes since the incident, but there were already black and blue marks on her face and arms, and a bandage was wrapped around her head. "Why wasn't I made aware of this when they brought the boy in?" Hiruzen asked.

"By the time the other instructors found him, the girl had already been taken to the nurses office. We haven't had time to question the other children yet, and most of them are too shaken by what they saw to talk about it." The secretary informed him.

"I see. Well, if you aren't too upset to talk, I would greatly appreciate being told what had happened." Hiruzen said to the children, putting on his nicest grandpa face.

"Yes, Hokage-sama." Akane said quickly, before she and Anko dove into a tale about the morning's events, starting with the teacher's behavior in the classroom going up to the time when Kyouya attacked.

"I see." Hokage said with a sigh, leaning back in his chair. "Mia, have word sent to the Uchiha clan of the events and tell them that Uchiha Tenko is to receive a dishonorable discharge. We can decide on the nature of the sentencing he will receive later. The hospital will also need to be told to place seals on the man's chakra after his condition stabilizes. While I doubt, he will be going anywhere any time soon, its best to stick to protocol."

"Yes Hokage-sama." The secretary said, before bowing and taking her leave.

"Hokage-sama, Kyouya-kun isn't going to be punished, is he?" Anko asked.

"No. No more than a slap on the wrist, I don't think. While his actions were regrettable, his reasons were good, at the very least." Hiruzen said with a shake of his head and a sad smile. "I am sorry you had such a horrible experience on your first day of school, and I do hope you choose to continue studying with us."

"I… I didn't come this far to back down now." Anko said, making fists at her sides.

"That's good to hear." Hiruzen said. "It's always nice to have new blood around. There used to be a lot of first-generation ninja coming in, back when the Academy was first established, but after the First Ninja War started, people from civilian families just stopped wanting to become ninja anymore."

"It… it isn't that they don't want to. It's just that the entrance exam is really hard to pass for people who aren't from a ninja clan." Anko said nervously.

""Entrance exam?"" Hiruzen and Danzou both said together in surprise.

"Y…yes. I only barely managed to pass it." Anko admitted.

"Since when has the Academy had an entrance exam?" Danzou asked, glaring at the Hokage.

"Don't look at me, this is the first I've ever heard of it." Hiruzen said before looking to Shitsuki. "Shitsuki-san, is there really an entrance exam?"

"Yes, Hokage-sama. As far as I know, there as always been an entrance exam." The young woman said with a nod. "And it has always seemed tailor made to make it rather difficult for first generation children to join."

"…We're going to have to fix this." Hiruzen said with a sigh. "The Academy was made by the Second Hokage so that anyone could learn to become a ninja, as well as to promote bonding between the different clans. This can't be allowed to stand."

"So our recruitment rates were halved because the old clans wanted to keep out any new blood that wanted to try and compete with them." Danzou grumbled, his one revealed eye narrowing in frustration. "There better not have been anyone from my clan involved in this."

It was rare for the two of them to agree on anything. Even now, they both knew that the reasoning behind their indignation was different. Danzou saw it as a blow to the village's manpower, while Hiruzen saw it as an affront to the ideals the village was built on. Not that it mattered. The two old man had decided that this was going to change, so it damn well was going to.

"Looks like we have six months to write up a new budge for the Academy, as well as call for a new curriculum to be made. We'll also need to find more teachers and room for the classes." Hiruzen mumbled as he started to go though all the steps they would need in order to get this mess straightened out. Then he glanced at the children. "Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. I'll be sure to solve this as quickly as possible. For now, I think it would be best if the three of you returned to your class… if they found a substitute that is." He then turned towards Kyouya in particular. "Young man, while you did a good thing fighting to protect your classmate, in the future you should… should… uh…"

"Zzz… Zzz…" Kyouya was snoring lightly in his seat, though his eyes were still open, and his arms crossed. A small snot bubble was coming from his nose and seemed to inflate and deflate with his breathing. The hedgehog on his head was in a similar state.

"He… fell to sleep." Danzou said, pointing out the obvious.

"Well, he does have Nara blood in him." Shitsuki giggled at the sight of her son completely disregarding two of the most powerful men in the village in order to take a nap. She reached down and gently touched the boy's shoulder, causing the bubble to pop and her son to look up at her. "Sweety, it's time for you to return to class."

"Hn." Kyouya responded with a short nod, jumping off his stool and walking towards the door, the two girls following after him.

"That was scary." Anko said with a hand on her chest. "I never thought I'd have to talk to the Hokage before."

"Yeah, him and Uncle Danzou can be scary sometimes." Akane nodded in agreement. "But everything turned out well, right Kyouya-kun?"

"Hn." Kyouya huffed, turning away from them and walking more swiftly towards the room.

"Hey, we just helped you get out of trouble, the least you can do is be friendly!" Anko shouted at him.

"Don't crowd me." Kyouya replied as he continued forward.

"Jezz, he's even less huggable than that hedgehog of his." Anko grumbled in frustration before following after him with a scowl on her face.

"And here I was hoping we could all be friends." Akane said with a sigh.

* * *

"You've raised an unusual child, Shitsuki-san. You and Toma-kun must be proud." Hiruzen said with a shake of his head. He had met a lot of people with their own little quirks, but that had to be the strangest child he had ever seen. Not a bad kid, just weird.

"Yes, we are." Shitsuki said sadly. "I guess you know now, that my son isn't normal."

Hiruzen nodded. The child wasn't normal. Even Kakashi, who had been considered the most talented individual in his generation, wouldn't have been able to compete with this boy.

"Hokage-sama, I beg you, don't take him away." Shitsuki said, bowing to the village leader.

"Excuse me?" The Hokage said, taken aback.

"I promise that Kyouya-kun will became a ninja when he grows up, but until then, please just let me keep my baby." Shitsuki said.

Hiruzen stared at the woman for a second before giving a heavy sigh. "Shitsuki-san, stop that at once. You should know better." The old man said with a shake of the head. "The Leaf isn't that kind of village. Even if your son didn't want to become a ninja, it would be his right to choose. We don't force people to do anything here, and we don't kidnap children."

Hiruzen had no idea were people got it into there minds that he was some kind of devious mastermind who kidnapped children, assassinated heirs and brainwashed civilians. Was it really that hard for people to believe that the leader of a ninja organization just wanted everyone to be happy and wasn't secretly plotting to rule the world from the shadows?

In truth, the young woman should have worried more about the Nara clan and what they would do when they found out about Kyouya's unusual talent.

"Thank you, Hokage-sama. I promise you won't regret this." Shitsuki thanked him before she left, leaving just Hiruzen and Danzou.

"So, this entire incident was caused by another Uchiha self-destructing under the 'Curse of Hatred'. He blamed the civilian population for the loss of his future prospects and took it out on anyone he could regardless of the consequences." Danzou grumbled as he stared out one of the windows. "Honestly, sometimes I think the Uchiha are more trouble than they are worth."

"Troublesome or not, they are a part of the village. They just need to learn to channel their energy better." Hiruzen said, grudgingly agreeing with his old friend and rival. "Same goes for Kyouya-kun."

"What are your plans for the boy?" Danzou asked.

"For now, I want him to stay in the Academy and hopefully get some communication and people skills. They seem to be what he is lacking in the most. Trying to talk to that boy was like pulling teeth." Hiruzen huffed, glancing back at the pictures of the fight. "Maito Kyouya. What a frighting child."

* * *

**Trying to draw parallels between the Hokage and Tsuna, both being leaders of what are supposed to be backstabbing organizations, but they really just want everyone to be happy. **

**Meanwhile Danzou is like Daemon, embittered by the deaths of their loved ones and determined to carry on their memories by making Vongola/the Leaf Village as powerful as possible. **

* * *

**Hibari is convinced that the Hokage is just another name for the President of the Disciplinary Committee. Makes sense to him. Of course the most powerful person in the village is the ****President of the Disciplinary Committee. Why wouldn't that be the most coveted position of all?**

**THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE!**

**In his defense, the Hokage and the school share the same building.**

* * *

**Going to do a time skip to graduation in order to keep the plot moving.**

**Also, I'm going to have most of the ninja at the Leaf cautious about Kushina, since she is also a Jinchūriki****. I'm using it as an explanation why she wouldn't be a Jounin instructor. People don't want there children around her.**


	4. Chapter 4

Anko came to school on her second day, her face already healed completely by the school's medical ninja. Medical Ninjutsu really was incredible, though after being told that the average trainee usually had to spend eight years of intensive training learning how to do it, and that if you mess up even slightly has horrible consequences on the body, learning it became a lot less appealing.

Still, it helped to hide from her parents just how bad that first day had been for her. She didn't know if they would have let her continue if they had seen what she had looked like just after that Uchiha had been through with her, even with the Hokage personally showing up to the tea shop to assure them that such a thing would never be allowed to happen again.

There was a sort of nirvana coming back to school. It was as if the first day had been so absolutely awful, that everything from here on out would be a cake walk just by comparison.

Though when she finally got to her classroom the difference in atmosphere was so extreme that she wondered if it was really the same place at all.

The sounds of children gossiping and bosting to one and other were gone and a heavy silence sat in the air. All of the children who had before mostly fought over seats close to the windows were now cramped together near the far wall.

The only thing that remained the same was him.

Kyouya sat in the same spot as before, leaning back in his seat with his eyes closed and his breathing steady. The rest of the class just stared at him, the way a group of baby sheep might stare at a sleeping lion, jumping every time there was a sudden noise or the boy twitched. Anything that might signal his waking.

It was almost comical, given that he was the smallest person in the room.

Almost…

As much as Anko hated to admit it, she was afraid of him too. His punches and kicks had been so fast the that she couldn't follow them with her eyes. His jutsu were capable of leaving her helpless. His animal could easily cut her to ribbons or crush her to death. Then there was the way he had been so casual about nearly killing a man.

But there as just something so sad about him sitting there all alone with everyone looking at him like he was some kind of monster. Weird and scary as he was, he was just a kid. Just like she didn't want to see him punished after he stood up to the teacher for her, she didn't want him to be all alone either.

Swallowing down on the hollow feeling in her stomach, Anko walked over and sat in the same seat she did the day before, right next to the terrifying child.

As she pulled out her seat, there was the slight noise of the chair scrapping against the wooden floor and Anko froze as Kyouya's silver eye snapped open and locked onto her. "W…what? Are you going to glare at me every time I try to sit down in my seat?" Anko asked, putting some heat into her voice. The little terrified voice inside her head was screaming at her for her stupidity, but her dumb mouth seemed to have a mind of its own.

However, rather than biting her to death, Kyouya just gave a small huff before closing his eye again.

Sitting down, Anko tried to let the tension leave her body. She wasn't exactly sure how long she could keep this up. Was the Academy going to be the death of her? But she's too young to die! There so much Dango she hasn't eaten yet!

No, she had to be brave. If she couldn't even sit next to his little kid, then how was she ever supposed to be a proper ninja? She wouldn't give up just because of his scary eyes!

"Anko-chan?" Anko blinked as she was brought out of her own little world to find Akane standing next to her. "Mind of I take this seat?"

"Ah, feel free, Shimura-san." Anko said, surprised that the girl wanted to sit next to her.

"It feels weird to be called Shimura, can't you just call me by my name? We're friends after all." Akane said with a cheerful smile.

"…Alright, Akane…-chan." Anko nodded, still a bit confused. Akane was a daughter of the main branch of one of the Leaf's four noble clans, and while the Shimura weren't as powerful as the Uchiha or Hyuuga, it was still a very influential clan. So why would the princess of one of the village's top clans want to be friends with a common civilian girl like her?

Akane even looked a little like a princess with her long black hair in a slightly wild hime cut, and her more traditional clothes in bright blue colors. It made Anko feel awkward about her own messy hair and slack trousers.

Akane chatted with Anko for a few moments, checking if things had gone well for her after they had parted the day before. All the while the other students in the classroom were paling from the sudden increase in noise in the classroom. Though if they were worried about things then, it would only get worse when Akane finished her conversation with Anko and then actually turned to Kyouya.

"Hey Kyouya-kun, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind helping me train after school." Akane asked the boy out of nowhere. No small talk, just straight into the danger zone. Kyouya's eye snapped open, but beyond that he didn't move, just glared at the girl with suspicion in his gaze.

"Akane-chan, are you sure you want to do that?" Anko asked, thinking about Kyouya and his aversion to being crowded. She didn't want her friend(?) to be bitten to death.

"Yes I'm sure." Akane nodded. "Yesterday was an eyeopener for me. Before they, I always got angry when people would say I was gifted because I was a Shimura. I thought that it was them ignoring all the hard work I put into getting stronger. But after seeing your fight with the teacher, Anko, I realized that I didn't know the first thing about effort."

"My fight!?" Anko said, thinking back to the horrible experience.

"Yes, the way you refused to give up and let that man step on your dream. Watching it, I couldn't help but to feel moved." Akane admitted, putting her hands over her heart. "I want to be able to put that kind of effort into my training. Maybe that way I can become strong enough to help protect the village, the same why may parents did."

Anko was stuck between wanting to flush with embarrassment, and the sinking feeling from hearing her new friend referring to her parents in the past tenths. It shouldn't have been that surprising. Thousands of Leaf ninja died during the Second Ninja World War. A lot of the students probably lost parents or other family members. Since most of the people Anko had grown up with were civilians, she hadn't really had to deal with that. Not really.

Akane had complemented her resolve and holding onto her dream, but had it really been a dream? She had never really had any goals at becoming a ninja besides just becoming one because everyone said she couldn't. It was more stubborn refusal to give up than noble determination. After hearing Akane say that she wanted to become strong to help protect the village, Anko's own goal of doing it just to prove she could seemed rather shallow and childish.

"Then I'll train with you too!" Anko said before her brain could stop her mouth. "We can get stronger and protect the village together!"

"Yeah!" Akane said, a look of complete joy on her face. "What do you say, Kyouya-kun? Would you please train with us?"

'What have you gotten me into this time mouth?' Anko thought as Kyouya stared at them with a bore and perhaps slightly irritated expression. At first, she thought he was going to shoot them down, or maybe even insult them, but instead, he actually agreed.

"Fine. I'll help show you little animals how to sharpen your fangs." He said a little coldly. "But after that, its over, and I owe you two nothing."

"Owe us?" Akane repeated with some surprise. "Wait, you think that we only helped you yesterday so that you would owe us? That's not right at all."

"Hmph. If small animals wish to lie, at least make it believable." Kyouya scoffed, closing his eyes again. "No one ever wants me. Not unless I am useful to them."

Anko wanted to protest but didn't know how. She had felt like she had owed him. He was the one who had fought the teacher, after all.

"Hey, none of that. Isn't it better for us all to just work together as friends and not keep score on things?" Akane said with a laugh. A laugh that got smaller and smaller as Kyouya didn't react or even acknowledge her presence anymore.

Soon after, the new teacher arrived and started class, beginning with history.

* * *

"I'm going to be staying after school to tutor these two small animals."

Shitsuki had been ecstatic when she had heard her son say that when she had gone to pick him up from school. Her sons very first play dead since he had turned ten months old!

It had become clear very early on to her that her son wasn't normal, and she had hidden him away from the rest of the world in order to try to protect him from being taken before her time. Even if the Hokage insisted that the village didn't do such things, Shitsuki didn't believe him entirely. Shadows can exist even within shadows. That was one of the principals of the Nara clan. So while the shadow they see might being clean, Shitsuki didn't doubt that there were darker shadows deep within the roots of the village. Shadows that wouldn't hesitate to try to take advantage of her baby boy.

Besides, Kyouya isn't the kind of kid one takes to another's birthday party. Not unless they were looking for a disaster. While Kyouya seemed to have a nack for knowing just how much strength to use too only leave his victims with scraps and bruises, things could very quickly escalate. First the small children that crowd him, then their older siblings and cousins, then the parents, until everyone wised up or they managed to gather enough people to overwhelm him with pure numbers until he got tired and fell asleep. That had been the basic chain of events when they had visited Toma's family.

Luckily the Maito family was rather thick skinned and took it the rampaging ten-month-old in stride. But that was the last time Shitsuki had went out of her way to set up a playdate between her son and another child his age.

So while these two girls were a bit more than two years older than him, Shitsuki had gladly given her permission for them to go and train together after school, telling them to use training ground #18, the forest training ground that was near the civilian section of the city where they lived, so that Kyouya would know the way home by himself. It was a forested training ground that few people used, since all the clans had their own nicer training grounds and it was too small for larger group exercises.

"Alright, so how should we get started?" Anko asked, having not really had any legitimate training before.

"We'll start by awakening your chakras." Kyouya said, taking Roll off his head and starting to carefully check is quills.

"Um, Kyouya-kun, we've both already awakened are chakra." Akane tried to point out.

"No, you haven't. You've only woken your Manipura or your nabhi chakra point which starts the flow of ki through the body. There are still the six more critical chakra points that remain blocked. With each one you open, the flow of energy will become stronger, allowing you to gather and use more power." Kyouya explained, leaving the two girls confused as he used a bunch of words they had never heard before. As gently as he could, Kyouya removed two of the quills from Roll's body, the little dagger like needles were only around as big as the boy's tiny thumbs and lay in his palm as he set Roll down on the ground.

"Alright… how do we do… whatever it was you said?" Anko asked, eyebrow twitching. She hoped she wasn't going to be quizzed over this. She had never heard Kyouya say so much at one time before.

"Ajna, the third eye chakra point, governs the balance of physical and spiritual energy within the body, promoting harmony within. If stimulated correctly, then the body will be thrown into chaos and it will remove all the internal blockage in your chakra channels." Kyouya said, confusing the girls even further. "Now before we start, I need you to think of something that irritates you."

"Something that irritates us?" Akane repeated, not sure if she had heard right.

"Yes. Something that you cannot stand, something that you need this strength in order to deal with, and that you could not ever allow yourself to die before you bite it to death. Hold that irritation close to your heart. Let it fester. It will be what supports you through this training." Kyouya said, his voice darkening, as if he was allowing himself to remember all the things that irritated him the most. "So, have you thought of something?"

"Um, yes. I have." Akane said, blushing a bit as she did so.

"I think so." Anko said with a nod.

"Good." The two needles in Kyouya's hand burst into bright purple flames, shocking the two girls, but before they could even think to move, Kyouya throw the needles directly at the two of them, striking each of them in the center of the forehead.

The two fell backwards and lay on the ground, momentarily motionless. Then, it started to happen. They began to shake uncontrollably, and steam started to rise up out of there bodies. Moments later, the two girls were back on their feet, teeth clenched, eyes wide, breathing fast, and with small flames present on their foreheads where the needles had hit them.

**"I'll become strong enough to beat up my idiotic, overprotective Uncle, even if it kills me!" "I'll punch that stupid unimpressed look off of Kyouya's face, even if it kills me!"** The two girls declared in unison.

"Such small fangs." Kyouya said, with an unimpressed look on his face. He took note of the colors of the girls' relatively small dying will flames. Akane was aqua blue, so she was a Rain-type, while Anko's was a crimson red, meaning Storm Flames. He'd figured as much.

He had long ago figured out the secret behind Reborn's dying will bullets. It wasn't hard to pull off something similar once you know the theory behind it. Though his Cloud Flames were less adept at awakening energy than Reborn's Sun Flames. Luckily the flames and the chakra network make use of the same seven key chakra points.

The two small animals started to growl at him for his dismissive comment. Each looking ready to pounce on him and attempt to bite him to death. "Doesn't matter. Now, come at me with your dying will."

The two didn't need any more invitation.

* * *

After losing an arm in the line of duty, Shimura Dujo was tasked with watching his clan's honorable daughter from the shadows, and to report if any threats were to approach her. He would sacrifice his own life for her if necessary. So he had freaked when the violence prone three-year-old had thrown a miniature dagger into the forehead of his charge while he was too far away to intercept.

Only rather than dying, the honorable daughter got back up to her feet, made an odd declaration about beating up the clan's chief elder while a small bright blue flame glowed in the center of her forehead.

Then the fighting started, and the man's already dropped jaw dropped even further and the five-year-old girls each started to display strength on the level of an experienced Genin, perhaps even a Chunin. Stray punches and kicks cracked tree trunks and left dents in the ground. And while their movements were inelegant, they were certainly fast. In forced to face the two of them in this condition, Dujo questioned his ability to handle them. If he still had both arms he could have handled them easily, but not now with just one hand.

Only the three-year-old was easily handling both of them at once. He was even dismissive of their attempts to hit him and had a bore look on his face. He led them on, deflecting their attacks and throwing them about. The girls would be tossed fifteen feet into the air and come crashing down to the ground, only to get up as if nothing had happened and continue to attack the boy like a pair of rabid dogs. Then after three and a half minutes, the girls just collapsed to the ground, as if they had been puppets and someone cut their strings.

Dujo might have thought they were died if he couldn't hear their panting breaths from where he was hiding in the trees.

"Out of stamina already?" The violent child said. "That will be all for today. We will do this again tomorrow. If you try to run, I will bite you to death." He then turned around and started to walk away, towards Dujo's hiding spot, his little mutant hedgehog running to catch up with him. "Make sure those two small animals get home safely, or I'll bite you to death as well."

Dujo stiffened as he realized the boy had known he had been watching them the entire time. He had once been a part of the ANBU, which specialized in stealth.

What a frightening child.

* * *

Hiruzen had had a long day. On top of his normal paperwork he had to go to a meeting on order to start plans on how to reorganize the school, and as the usual, him and his advisers couldn't agree on what was the best way to teach the children, resulting in them arguing for hours before coming up with a compromise. In order to fit everything, they would just increase the number of years spent in school from five to six.

Then he had found out that the workshopping required to create a new curriculum was going to take four or five years anyways. He told them to have a plan ready for the first-year students of the next year, so that they could at least handle the sudden influx of civilian born students, by the time the next school cycle began.

Then he had to field the complaints from the clans who didn't want their children dragged down by all of the untalented civilians joining the school. Then when he didn't listen to them, they started trying to target the people he was assigning to rewrite the curriculum. The bastards were already trying to sabotage the workshop before its very first day in an attempt to maintain the status quo.

The pains of dealing with an entire community of ninja.

He was tired. Spiritually exhausted. He wanted to return to his office, close the windows and lock all the doors and just sit in his chair and enjoy some silence for a change.

So he was in for a bit of a surprise when reached his seat only to find that there was someone already in it. "How in the world did you get in here?" The Hokage exclaimed as he stared down at Kyouya's sleeping form. The child was laying flat on his back in the Hokage's seat, as if it was a couch, his eyes closed and a snot bubble coming from his nose.

At the sound of Hiruzen's voice, the bubble popped, and his eyes opened.

Kyouya stared up at the old man with his strong silver eyes, as if annoyed that the man had ruined his nap. Then the child spoke. "I'll bite you to death. Then I will be the Hokage."

Hiruzen stared at the child for a second before chuckling a bit to himself. "We'll see about that." It had been a while since the last time this had happened. It was always amusing when one of the school children got it into their heads that they could beat the Hokage and take his throne that way, and Hiruzen always humored them when he had the time. They always made for good bonding exercises.

This might actually be a good way to unwind and get to know the kid better.

* * *

**Pushing back the time skip a little so show more of Hiruzen and Danzou personalities and the clan psychology.**

**I'm going to be trying to be more fair to Danzou, since he really is just like Daemon. His family's dying wish was for him to make the Leaf strong and he will do so whatever it takes, even if it means backstabbing everyone who ever trusted him.**

**Hiruzen understands that he is an idealist and that he is struggling to overcome hundreds of years of hate. He can see when people are going down a dark paves, but he wants to still hold out hope that they will change rather than taking drastic measures. He also can't force people to stop being prejudice or passing on their prejudice thoughts to their children.**

**The Nara clan has trained an army of DEER to use chakra and attack anyone who isn't a Nara or in the company of a Nara the moment they enter the compound. If that isn't a giant xenophobic 'we don't take kindly to your kind around here' than I don't know what is.**

**Remember that 40 years ago (this is 20 years before the show starts), all of the clans were their own separate villages (so each clan easily has 10000 people in it). They aren't used to being in close proximity to each other without fighting and almost never married outside of the clan. So while they are willing to unit against foreign threats, they prefer to live in their own isolated communities and don't want to mix.**

**Think of it like post civil war era communities. Yes the blacks and whites are technically equal and American, but they don't mingle if they don't have to. (Which tends to be partially true even to this day.) Only in this case, rather than just 2 races there are something like 25. Some of the younger generation might have gotten over it, but the current elders would still likely be racists. **

**The Hokage isn't criminally incompetent, Danzou isn't cartoonishly evil, and the ninja clans aren't all nice to one and other. The behavior of the Uchiha is closer to the norm than the exception. The Uchihas are just more extreme because they are willing to completely self-destruct for their pride and vengeance.**

* * *

**PS. Please forgive any spelling and grammar errors, and I am (as my name states) a dyslexic writer and therefore there will always be errors. I try, but my trying looks like your average person not trying. You will know when I don't try because it will look like something written by a sixth grader.**


	5. Chapter 5

The Hokage hummed a little to himself, a smirk on his face.

The child wasn't so bad. On a scale from one to ten, he'd rate the boy's taijutsu at a solid eight, as good as some of the village's Jounin. He was also faster and stronger than any child had any right to be. But his short limbs set him at a huge disadvantage for the little game of keep away that the Hokage was taking a part in. The old man had even attached the bells to his waist, for old times sake.

However, Kyouya wasn't your ordinary brat, and wasn't limited to just punches and kicks. The Nara Clan's clever mind and shadow techniques were as obnoxious to deal with as ever, and the boy had a knack for slipping in small genjutsu now and then in order to keep the old man on his toes. All that, along with the hedgehog ninja animal's ability to change size and fly around made it like fighting the entirety of the Ino-Shika-Chou combo all over again, just like he had when he taken on the three heirs as his second set of Genin students. Only now with a bit more taijutsu thrown into the mix, which none of those three had been particularly good at.

Also, Chouza had never been good with clone jutsu.

What had started off as just one giant ball flying at him quickly turned into ten separate spiked balls, all of varying sizes and speeds. Dodging all of them as they flew around, as well as keeping his attention up for shadows and illusions, was keeping the old man on edge. It was actually quite challenging.

Hiruzen hadn't had this much fun in months.

And it was more or less just a game. Frightening as the spiked balls looked, these creatures seemed to have a bit of control over there shape. So the spikes were rounded and rather dull. Not only that, they were purposely aimed away from areas that might cause an accidental fatal hit. Even if the Hokage took a hit from them, it would only hurt like a bitch, not kill him.

As ferrous as the boy was, he didn't aim to kill. What a nice boy. The longer he played with him, the more Kyouya started to grow on the old man. It was like when you had a puppy that hadn't yet learned to not bite its owner, slightly alarming and a bad sign for the future, but adorable at the same time.

"Shadow Sewing Jutsu." Kyouya's shadow expanded towards the Hokage who rapidly backed up, keeping his eye on the shadow's relatively slow progress and it grew up out of the ground and formed into spikes.

'8. 9 ½. 12. 13. 13 ½. Impressive. That's two meters further than Shikaku can go without assistance.' Hiruzen thought with some interest as he started to make hand signs of his own. "Earth Wall Jutsu."

Two slabs of stone rose up on either side of the man, blocking the three death balls that had tried to surround him. The balls became stuck in the earthen shields for a moment, before they changed sizes again, given them enough wiggle room to pull free.

With the wall obscuring vision, he used a tunneling jutsu, thinking to ambush the boy from underneath, dragging him down and leaving him trapped in the soil. It was a common capturing jutsu and extremely effective when the opponent is predictable or when the user was a sensory type, like Hiruzen just so happened to be.

Such a plan was canceled as Kyouya sent his shadows into the ground in search of the old man, getting dangerously close to him. "How'd you know I was down there?" Hiruzen asked him as he reappeared from underground.

Kyouya was already running straight at him, hands raised into fists. "The bells." He said, startling Hiruzen, who laughed as he guarded against the boy's attack. He continued to block and push back against Kyouya, throwing a punch here and there, trying to gain an opening, not that he was getting any. The side attacks from his hedgehog minions also lined up perfectly in order to cover or enhance his attacks.

The Maito didn't have anyone who was this good as taijutsu. Dai had pushed his body hard, but he was a power fighter, not a skilled one. So where had the kid learned it?

While the Hokage could have overpowered or out maneuvered the boy if he started to use his more advanced taijutsu, normal techniques weren't going to cut it. Though it wouldn't take much for him to just stay one step ahead of the boy and continue their little game until he was tuckered out, without having ever taken a single hit. He was getting on in years, but he wasn't so old that his stamina had taken any major hits.

Or so he thought.

He hadn't known that the child still had tricks up his sleeve. It started with a perplexing backhanded sweep attack. A move that was normally easy to dodge, even without the difference in reach taken into account, and would leave several openings. Kyouya was a better fighter than to use such a move. Hiruzen's mind registered the oddity, but he wasn't under a genjutsu at the moment, so he only took a half step back in order to avoid the little fist.

That was when the boy's arm tripled in size and slammed into the Hokage with his full, and now enhanced, strength. The size, strength and mass of the boy's arm had increased massively, giving him a punch that exceeded anything he had been able to do up to that point. Hiruzen was shocked as he was knocked backwards into the air by the heavy hit, directly into the path of three of the boy's flying spike balls.

"Air Bullet Jutsu." The Hokage shot a blast of air out of his mouth, using the shot to propel him out of the way of the surprise attack. The old man landed on the ground a good distance away, surprised, but still uninjured. "Good attempt. You nearly got me there." He chuckled, though he was eyeing the boy's expanded arm.

Partial Multi-Size Jutsu. And without any hand signs as well. How in the world did the boy use the Akimichi clan's bloodline technique? Hiruzen supposed it was possible that Shitsuki was a descendant of the Akimichi clan, since they and the Nara clan were close, but it seemed unlikely.

The clothing around the right arm had been ripped to pieces, as it hadn't been designed to take the rapid growth. The muscular arm looked so out of place on the boy's tiny frame, as if someone had attached a giant's arm onto the child's body. Kyouya scowled at him as he allowed his arm to deflate back down to normal size, steam coming off of the boy's skin as it did so. The kid stared to rub the arm and roll it around in order get feeling back into it.

So he wasn't used to expanding and contracting his body. Or perhaps his non-Akimichi body was just not suited for the transformation. "That was a pretty surprising move, but you aren't used to using it, are you?" Hiruzen asked the boy as he was recovering from his own attack.

"Hn. The technique is usable by a worthless Insect. A Carnivore does not need to practice it." Kyouya said dismissively.

"Using a technique for the first time in the heat of battle is a desperate move. You should have practiced it more. It would give you a better understanding of its strengths and weaknesses." Hiruzen scolded the child, though in truth he was impressed. Pulling off the Partial Multi-Size Jutsu on your first try isn't something to scoff at. Chouza didn't get the technique down right until late into his Genin year.

"Don't presume to lecture me, Old Monkey." Kyouya said taking a step forward.

'Ah, Kyouya-kun has given me a nickname.' Hiruzen chuckled to himself. He would have preferred Uncle or Grandpa, but he'd take what he could get. Besides, Old Monkey was kind of fitting.

Kyouya started to run towards the Hokage again, but then tripped and fell to the ground. Hiruzen watched as the boy struggled to get back up and stumbled forward. The old man sighed, he had thought this might happen.

*Growl*

Kyouya's small stomach rumbled loud enough for Hiruzen to hear it from a good distance away.

There was a damn good reason why the Akimichi clan ate the way they did. The Multi-Size Jutsu consumed an absolutely massive amount of physical stamina, along with the strain it put on the body. Even so, it seemed as though the kid wasn't prepared to give up. With feet that could barely support his weight and arms too tired and sore to be used properly, the body continued to attack.

'He's going to keep going until he collapses completely.'

"Hey, Kyouya-kun. I know you want to continue, but this old man is getting a little hungry. Would you mind if we called it here and went to get something to eat? It will be my treat." The Hokage said, causing Kyouya to pause. "You like ramen?"

* * *

'Ramen Ichiraku' appealed to Kyouya's sense of esthetics, being the cross between a normal building and a ramen chart. The entire thing had a very Japanese feel to it, and the ramen itself was both well-presented and quite tasty.

If only his mother could have cooked something like this.

According to the Old Monkey, Ramen Ichiraku had the reputation for having the best ramen in the entire Land of Fire and that its recipe was considered a Class A secret. Kyouya was rather impressed. The only complaint he had was that they only had cold tea from a can rather than any freshly brewed. They had looked at him funny when he had requested the tea and tried to offer him a carbonated drink instead, but Kyouya wouldn't have it. You don't drink soda with ramen. The uncultured fools.

Now that he had thought about it, how long had it been since he had an actually good cup of tea? …How irritating.

"Tell me Kyouya-kun, why is it that you want to be the Hokage in the first place?" The Old Monkey asked him after they had finished their first bowls and were waiting for seconds. Who would have thought that Skull's technique had such a downside to it? The worthless Insect was even more worthless than Kyouya had originally assumed.

The Old Monkey had returned to calling Kyouya by his given name, but the boy decided to allow it. Though he was not sure if the man was a Carnivore, he was still someone who, at the moment, could give Kyouya a challenge and even beat him. He could respect that. Even if he would bite him to death for it later.

"I wish to bring discipline to the Academy." Kyouya declared. "The Small Animals at the Academy are rowdy and inattentive. Without proper discipline to help them grow their fangs, they will all turn into irritating Herbivores and bring shame to the village."

"Is that so." Hiruzen replied. He usually got answers about proving themselves to be the greatest out of the children who wanted to become the Hokage, without any real knowledge of what the Hokage actually was. Hearing Kyouya's more mature, if a little weirdly worded, response was a bit refresh. "I'm willing to admit, I've let the Academy get out of hand. With all the paperwork and political nonsense they drop on me day after day, I didn't even know that they had implemented an entrance exam twenty years ago. I've always been too busy to look after the Academy."

Kyouya narrowed his eyes at the old man. "I thought that the Hokage was the one in charge of the discipline in the Academy."

"Hm? Not really. No more than I am for any other government serves in the village. The Hokage is responsible for protecting and moderating for the entire Leaf Village. While the Academy is very important, it is only one aspect of the Leaf. Most of my day is spent looking over trade agreements, disputes between clans, supply requests from our various hospitals and research facilities, mission briefing and debriefings for the hundreds of ninja teams, and dealing with the noble cast from elsewhere in the Land of Fire, as well as any other problems that might come up… such as a child hospitalizing their teacher. It's a lot of paperwork." Hiruzen sighed.

"I… thought…" The boy's normally disinterested scowl turned to a look of actual distressed. "I do not wish to become the Hokage." Kyouya declared with a shudder before turning away from Hiruzen as their second bowls were delivered.

"Oh, and here I thought I would finally be able to retire. What a petty." The Hokage chuckled before digging into his own bowl.

* * *

Shitsuki was starting to wander if her boy was going to get home in time for dinner. It was starting to get late.

She wasn't really worried about him getting lost, as the training ground was just a few blocks away, and they had walked the path together at least twice a week since the boy had been born. Nor did the idea of kidnappers really seem that likely.

Even if Kyouya looked like the perfect target, he wouldn't have been taken without the kind of fight that would be noticed. She wasn't too proud to admit that her baby boy had surprised her and her husband already.

…Still, it was getting late.

Shitsuki shifted uncomfortably on the mate that lay in the small family room. She wanted to take a nap, but a mother couldn't help but feel uncomfortable when her child was not nearby. Before the day before, Kyouya had rarely been out of her sight for more than an hour. Now she was having separation anxieties.

*Knock* *Knock*

"Hm, who could that be?" Shitsuki wondered as she got up and headed for the door. No one had ever knocked on the door since she had first started living there four years ago. They had always paid there bills early, so the landlord never bothered them, and she and Toma both had plenty of experience in home repair from their D ranked missions, so they never had any repairmen in their apartment either. Nor had they ever invited any family over, due to Kyouya's territorial nature.

It wasn't until she opened up the door and saw Shikaku standing there that she thought of just why someone might have come to her apartment. "Hey Shitsuki…"

*Bang*!

She slammed the door in the man's face.

* * *

"How troublesome." Shikaku sighed, running his fingers through his hair.

He had figured that she wouldn't even give him a chance to talk. Shitsuki was a woman after all, and therefore would never listen to a word he said. Why the elders thought that he might be able to talk her into coming back to the Nara Clan, he had no idea.

After hearing that the three-year-old son of hers had kicked the shit out of a Chunin, the elders started to kick themselves about having banished her. They had assumed that any child of a Maito, a family famous for being unable to preform even basic jutsu, wouldn't be of any value to the clan and wouldn't be able to pass on the bloodline. It had seemed more important to them to make an example of Shitsuki so that other girls didn't try to pull the same thing.

Finding out that the boy might just be the most talented individual of the generation had come as a shock to them, and they now wanted to get him back. Didn't take a genius to tell you that that bridge had already been burned. Still, they had hoped that Shikaku would be able to talk some sense into Shitsuki. Honestly, he wished that it could have been Toma who answered the door, but he was off on a C rank mission and wouldn't be back for another few days.

Shikaku had never had a problem with Toma, or the fact that Shitsuki had left him for the man. The two had never liked each other anyways. It had been decided by the elders that they should have been married since they were the same age and Shitsuki showed modest talent.

It was the clan elders that had problems with it.

The truth was, while the Leaf Village was united against foreign threats, it was extremely divided internally. Each Clan had originally been its own separate village and used to operating as such. Everything from guards to restraints within a clan's compound were owned and operated by that clan. Some of the non-combative clan members had never left the compound once in their lives, and they didn't want people from other clans coming into their compound or even intact with them.

The Nara's might have had a really good relationship with a few of the other clans, even before the creation of the village, but they were just like everyone else when it came to keeping their clan pure. The older generation distrusted outsiders so much that they had trained an entire herd of deer in use of chakra and sensory skills, and then taught them to attack anyone who enters the compound who doesn't have a Nara's chakra or is in the presence of someone with said chakra.

It must have taken a startling amount of effort, something that Nara men and women normally don't put into things.

Shikaku wished they would just get with the times already. The whole village was their family now.

Since standing on her doorstep was pointless, Shikaku turned around and started towards the stairs of the admittedly rather slummy apartment building. As the clan's coveted all the best workers and resources for themselves, the more public sections of the city tended to have a more neglected look to them, with everything made of plaster, sheet metal and whatever third rate materials the builders could get their hands on, even government buildings, like the Academy and hospitals, had the dirty gray, muddy brown, and rusty red look about them.

It was enough to make a man feel guilty about his two-story, traditional, wooden mansion with eighteen rooms, paper doors, giant private bath and its own garden. Though he knew that even the people who sweep the streets in the Nara district live in better than this place. The class difference between people who were a part of an established clan and people who weren't was easy to see, regardless if they are ninjas or not. All the wealth the village has is owned by the clans.

Almost anyone in the public sector would have jumped at the chance to join a clan like the Naras, but not Shitsuki. She wouldn't come back, because to return to the clan was to leave her husband and lose control of both her own life and that of her child. Even without talking to her about it, Shikaku knew this for a fact. The elders were wasting their time. His father had given up the clan's claim to her and her child and she wasn't going to come running back. The only chance the elders had left would be to appeal to the Hokage to try and lay claim to the boy.

Though that option seemed to have gone out the window.

Shikaku was at the stares when the Hokage himself started to walk up them, carrying a sleeping child in his arms, and with a strange looking hedgehog sleeping on his Kage hat. "Fancy seeing you here, sensei." Shikaku said as he looked from the old man to the child. "So, that's the kid whose been causing all this trouble."

"Yes, this is Maito Kyouya. He came to… or broke into my office just a few hours ago and challenged me to become the Hokage." Hiruzen chuckled. "He thought it was another name for the school principal. Anyways, after a little friendly sparring he started to get hungry, so I bought him dinner, then he fell to sleep."

"Really, sounds like the kid takes after his father than." Shikaku said with a shake of his head.

"He has qualities of both parents, both Yin and Yang. Rather than just being all one or the other." Hiruzen said with a meaningful look.

"I suppose your right sensei, the Nara clan has way too much Yin and not enough Yang to go with it." Shikaku said, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a letter. "Mind giving this to the kid's mom, she won't let me through the door."

Hiruzen took the letter from the man and glanced it over. "Wedding invitation?" The Hokage asked, to which the young man nodded. "I never imagined that Nara Shikaku would be doing something as 'troublesome' as getting married behind his clan's back and to a woman outside of the clan too. And the Uchiha called it scandalous when their heir married a woman who was only half Uchiha. Are you trying to one up them as a political statement or something?" The old man teased.

"Do you really think I would be willing to go through all this trouble to marry a woman I didn't love as a political statement?" Shikaku asked with a questioning look on his face.

"I didn't think you would ever willingly get married at all." The Hokage said bluntly.

"Well, what can I say, Yoshino is the Yang to my Yin." Shikaku said as he walked past the old man. "See you later, sensei."

* * *

Danzou had a tiring day.

While both he and Hiruzen had agreed that something had to be done about the attendance of the children of the civilian class at the Academy, they couldn't agree what should be done about the changes to the school curriculum.

Danzou wanted to cut out some of the history lessons in order to focus on getting the civilian children caught up with chakra control, while Hiruzen was willing to delay the start of combat training until the weaker students could catch up.

'People who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.' How cliché can you get?

Luckily Danzou didn't have to actually go through the man. He just had to influence those who had been delegated the task of making the new material without Hiruzen noticing.

Was it deceitful? Maybe, but Danzou would do whatever it took to make the Leaf Village strong.

His father and grandfather, his brother and cousins, his niece and her husband, so many of his clansmen had given their lives for this village, believing in it. If Danzou allowed it to fall, how could he ever face them in the afterlife?

When Hiruzen gave up the advantage they had at the end of the Second Ninja World War in order to declare a temporary peace, Danzou counted it as the ultimate betrayal. They had the chance to secure the Leaf's future once and for all by instead they made a peace that would doubtlessly only last a few short years, rendering the sacrifices of the ninja who died in the war pointless.

Now the fool wanted to just wait and see what would happen rather than preparing for the inevitable or making a preemptive strike. However, Danzou wouldn't do the same. He would make sure that the village would have its advantage in the coming war. He would make sure that what was left of his Clan survived.

Akane. She was some of the only direct family that he had left, which was why he was horrified when her secret escort reported to him what had happened during her 'training' section after school. The description that the man gave was almost identical to what would happen if one was to open the Gate of Opening, the Gate of Healing and the Gate of Life, the first three gates in a sequence of eight gates that make up one of the most dangerous and powerful forbidden jutsus, as well as one of the most difficult to obtain.

He had heard that one of the Maito was going through the insane training required to open the eight gates, and had made it through a few of them after twelve years of the kind of training that earns you strange looks in the streets, but to hear that the young boy had a method of forcing the gates of others open was a surprise. If the man wasn't so frightened for his niece's health, him might have been greedy for such a useful jutsu.

He had rushed to the girl's room, where she was fast asleep, to check on her condition.

Her muscles showed signs of wear, but not to the dangerous levels that the old man had been afraid he'd find. Nor was there damage to her nerves or any of her organs. There didn't seem to be anything that wouldn't be solved by a good night's sleep. Not only that, but the girl's chakra flow was stronger than it had been the last time he had checked it. Not considerably, but more than one should have been able to improve by after just one week of training.

What in the world was this technique that the boy had used? Was it some kind of partial opening of the chakra gates that wouldn't threaten the lives of the user? It was true that while the boost in the girls' strengths had been immense, had it been to the level provided by truly opening the forbidden gates? The only hint that they had to go on was the odd flames that the observer reported, and the weird hedgehog like creature which the boy had gotten the needles from.

Regardless what it was, having such a powerful tool in the Leaf Village's arsenal would be invaluable in the future, so long as the boy could be properly controlled. Maybe he could get a sample of the hedgehog's quills and get Orochimaru to find a way of duplicating the effect. Leaving Akane in his care wouldn't be the worst thing after all.

With an army, or even just a small elite squad, capable of opening some of the chakra gates at each and every battle, without losing their ability to function afterwards, they would be invincible.

The future was looking bright for the Leaf Village.

* * *

**Now I really am going to do the time skip.**

**Since the Sannin would be around 20 something by the time Shikaku and his team became Genin, and we know that someone from Hiruzen's family was there teacher, I'm just saying that it is the Hokage himself, teaching them as his second group of trainees.**

**Is that canon, no, but who cares.**


	6. Chapter 6

"Mitarashi Anko has a good head on her shoulders and has some experience with both intel gathering and research. She also can hold her own against most Chunin level opponent already. I want her to be placed on your team, Orochimaru." Hiruzen said, glancing at his pale faced former student.

"Of course, sensei." The man said as he looked over the girl's file with a pleased expression.

Good, he'd take the girl. Anko had a strong sense of right and wrong, which Hiruzen hoped would be a good influence on Orochimaru who seemed to be becoming more and more power hungry as of late. If not, she might at least snitch on him if he does anything too out there.

With that out of the way, the Hokage glanced over his advisers and the new Jounin instructors. With the Third Ninja War in full swing, he didn't have as many possible instructors as he would like, but it seemed like they would have just enough people for this year's graduating group. They had already gone through most of the graduating students, but there was still a few more to go.

Including the big one.

"Well, I suppose we should get this over with. Bring out Maito Kyouya's file." Hiruzen said with a heavy sigh.

Nara Shikaku bent down and lifted up the massive three ringed binder from underneath the table, dropping it onto the table with a heavy thud. There were a few whistles from the surrounding Jounin as they stared at the heavy thing.

"Holy shit!" "It's even bigger than it was last time." "I've never seen a pre-Chunin with a file that big."

While most of the nearly minted Genin had two or three pages about their time at school, with the more interesting cases having as many as eight pages, the documentation of Maito Kyouya skills, relations, psychology, and the incidents he had gotten himself involved in over the past five years was just shy of four hundred pages long.

The first twelve pages were dedicated to a breakdown of the boy's psychological profile. The twenty pages after that were an analysis of his combat abilities and the various jutsu he knew, including the one of unknown origins that the boy seemed to have made up himself. The questionable nature of these jutsu and their inability to get the boy to just give simple answers about them, led to this particular section becoming bloated by theories. Another three pages were dedicated to what little they knew about the animal partner that the boy had acquired from no one knows where. After that was another seven pages dedicated to the 'Disciplinary Committee' that the boy established, and its exact workings. Then there was the three hundred pages of documentation about his unusual adventures, ranging from the disciplining of rowdy students, teachers and sometimes even parents, to him somehow tracking down and capturing underground organizations, foreign spies and drug lords inside of the Leaf Village.

The very last page of the binder was the boy's BINGO listings, complete with a list of his nicknames and the criminal underworld's best guesses about his abilities. At the moment, there was a sixty thousand ryo bounty for his head, a high C rank bounty.

Anyone willing to go after the boy for so little was insane, just like anyone stupid enough to call him the 'Ankle Biter'.

"He's been even busier ever since he learned the Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu." Shikaku said with a heavy sigh.

"Who was it that taught him the Shadow Clone Jutsu in the first place?" Koharu asked, as if it had been the dumbest thing in the world to do.

"No one. He learned it when he stole the Forbidden Scroll of Seals." Hiruzen said flatly.

"He did what!?" The old woman gasped.

"Page two hundred and twenty-nine." Shikaku said, pushing the binder over. She turned to the document and read the report about how the boy had replaced the Scroll of Seals with a genjutsu, with no one even knowing the thing was gone until he casually returned it a week later, saying he was finished with it. "He's a natural when it comes to clone jutsus. We have on record times when he would produce over a hundred shadow clones at once and have them patrol the city for more than an hour. We aren't actually sure of his limits."

"That kid really just does whatever he wants, doesn't he?" Akimichi Chouza chuckled as he ate from his bag of chips.

"And there is our main problem. We have absolutely no way of directing him, let alone controlling him." Hiruzen said. He loved the boy like a grandson, but he was more than willing to admit that he was a handful at times. "Officially speaking, he had completed the requirements for graduating from the Academy four years ago but has simply not recognized his own status as a Genin, choosing instead to just continue to go to school every day. Though he only naps in one of our conference rooms which had has claimed for himself rather than going to class. I think he's in there right now, just down the hall. At other times he patrols the school and 'bites to death' anyone who is disturbing the peace."

This in and of itself wasn't so bad. The Academy had a long history of its students not taking it seriously. Children of ninja families were generally taught more about being a ninja by their own clans, with each clan sharing with them their own special ninjutsus and fighting styles. The Academy had usually been treated as more of a social club, a daycare center, a place to show off, or at its worst, a place to be a fangirl/fanboy. But that shit didn't fly under the tyrannical rule of the 'Wakaikage', as some of the students called him.

Classes became actually productive, with students focusing on their lessons out of fear of earning the wrath of the Maito Monster and his organization. Though Hiruzen secretly believed that many of the changes enforced in the school policies were suggested and brought about by Anko and Akane, Kyouya's two lieutenants, merely using Kyouya's name and organization to further their own objectives. Not that Kyouya seemed to care, so long as they didn't disturb the peace.

"He ignored our first attempt to graduate him. The second time, the Jounin instructor tried to force him into joining his teammates… with horrible consequences. The man was out of the hospital in just two days but refused to ever get close to the boy again. After that, the ANBU tried to approach him… and it turned out equally poorly for them." Hiruzen continued. "So we've allowed him to just keep going for the last five years, but now it is time for him to graduate from the Academy with the rest of his class. The problem is, who can actually handle him?"

None of the Jounin volunteered. While they were exactly afraid of the boy, since he didn't kill even enemy ninjas who he had captured, but two or three days in the hospital wasn't appealing to any of them. Especially since they might have to make multiple trips if they actually became the boy's sensei.

Hiruzen wondered if he was going to have to take on the boy himself as his third Genin team. While the two of them had a good relationship going, Hiruzen's duties as Hokage wouldn't allow for dealing with Kyouya all the time.

"You sure you don't want to give it a shot, Shikaku?" Inoichi said, smiling at the Nara. "After all, the kid is of your blood, right? Who better to train him?"

"Not happening." Shikaku said with a shake of his head. While he and Shitsuki were at least on speaking terms, she still hadn't forgiven his father and had been taking a perverse glee in keeping the boy away from the Nara clan in order to spite the Nara elders. There's no way she'd approve of her son being Shikaku's student, as it would be symbolically giving the boy to the clan. Besides, the kid is troublesome with a capital 'T'. "Though if no one wants the kid, I've got a suggestion."

"Dare I even ask?" Inoichi said with a raised eyebrow.

"Kyouya's psychology is easy to predict, once you realize he thinks like a wild animal. Our main issue is his reluctance to accept an alpha and the way he immediately tries to fight back whenever anyone tries to even imply dominance over him. What we need is someone who can simply endure being with him long enough for him to get over his issues with them. Someone with a ridiculous amount of energy, who can take a hit and then get back up. Someone who is too stubborn to ever give up. Someone who's been whining about wanting to be a Jounin instructor for the last three years, ever since her husband became one." Shikaku said, slowly getting more specific.

"Ah. Her." Inoichi said with a small nod of his head as he realized who Shikaku was alluding to. "Yes, she would definitely be willing. Though I'm honestly not sure I want those two to ever meet. I'm not even sure which one of them I would be more worried about."

"Could work though. Kyouya doesn't ever aim for the kill and no amount of scraps and bruises would slow that woman down and it would take a lot to restrain her." Shikaku pointed out. Several of the other Jounin around the table were looking around uncomfortable as they realized who the man was talking about.

Not everyone was so skittish about the subject, Shikaku in particular never seemed to be bothered by her, but most preferred to just forget that he existed, and almost everyone agreed that she should be handled with caution. Some of them had been friends with her for years, or at least friendly acquaintances, but that had been before what she was became more general knowledge.

"She'll be over the moon." Hiruzen huffed with a small smile.

"Hokage-sama, you can't seriously be planning on letting her deal with the boy. What if she…" Koharu started but Hiruzen waved her off.

"We'll keep an eye on things, but she's always proven that she could keep herself under control in the past. Have a little faith. It isn't like anyone has a better solution as to how to handle Kyouya-kun." Hiruzen said. "We'll let her have a chance. Now, who's next?"

They still had a few more to go before the end.

* * *

_"Sorry little bird, but this is a dog eat dog world."_

Hibari stared at the woman as her blood pooled out onto the floor. Her neck was ripped open, as if a dog had sank its teeth into her and torn her throat out. It had taken a while for the heart to stop beating, so there was blood absolutely everywhere.

Hibari's eyes were watering. He wanted to wipe them, but his hands were covered in blood. All of him was covered in her blood.

'I bit her to death. I was the dog that bit her to death.'

The words ran in a loop in the boy's mind.

She had been his first-grade teacher. The only adult who didn't seem to be afraid of him because of who his family was. She had been so kind to him, always smiling. She had been his favorite… until the moment she put a gun to his head.

_"…this is a dog eat dog world."_

"Kyouya-kun?" Hibari turned his head to see his grandfather standing there, his pet monkey jumping up and down behind him. The usual smile was gone from the old man's infant face.

"Old Monkey, why…?" Hikari asked, his voice empty.

"She was Triad. She wanted to use you to get leverage against the family. I suppose they didn't think you would be capable of defending yourself." Fon said sympathetically. Hibari didn't respond. He didn't want to hear it. "Kyouya-kun?" Fon said, taking a step forward, only for Hibari to take one back. He didn't want his grandfather near him. He didn't want anyone near him. He didn't want their fake smiles, or the fake sympathy. How could he know who he could trust?

_'…dog eat dog.'_

If that was the case, then he would simply be the biggest dog. One so strong that no one would ever dare to try and bite him again. He is be the alpha, the strongest carnivore. Until he was, there was no one he could trust but himself.

He turned away from his grandfather, the man who had taught him everything and started to walk away. "Kyouya-kun, where are you going? Kyouya-kun!?"

"Kyouya-kun, are you planning on sleeping straight through graduation?" Kyouya reach a hand up to the rim of his hat, pulling it slightly to the side so that he could glare at Anko. She didn't react and just placed down the hot cup of tea on the coffee table next to his couch.

"Kyouya-kun, they are going to be announcing the teams soon. Maybe the three of us will be on a team together. Wouldn't that be great?" Akane said cheerfully. "Though I can't imagine anyone else would be able to handle being on a team with you."

Their teasing voices irritated him. He had allowed the two small animals far too much leeway over the last few years. Kusakabe would have never taken such a tone with him. The two had always been skirting the line, seeing how far they could go before being bitten and making sure to pull back right before they crossed the line. They even occasionally went so far as to oppose him, such as the time when he had sought to establish a school dress code.

Their game was a constant one, and it was irritating. So very irritating.

Honestly, the only reason that Kyouya still allowed them around him was because Akane turned out to have good management skills for his organization, and because Anko knew how to make a good cup of tea, as well as perform a proper tea ceremony. If it wasn't for that, he would have bitten them both to death a long time ago.

Kyouya sat up and put his Kage style hat on the couch next to him and he reached for the tea.

The hat had been a gift from the two small animals. A purple and black version of the hat the Hokage wore, only with the kanji for 'discipline' on it, rather than 'fire'. He used it to shield his eyes when he napped, and even occasionally wore it when his two irritating lieutenants pestered him into doing it. It had earned him the nickname 'Wakaikage'. Wakai meant young or youthful, referring to both the fact that he himself was quite young and the Maito family's moto about the fire of youth.

When the girls were in secretary mode, they sometime even called Kyouya 'Wakaikage-sama'.

"Wakaikage-sama, I have the reports from the teams in the Daoryn marketing district." Akane told him before handing him the clipboard. He scanned over the notes taken by the children. A strictly laid out report about the patrols making note of any incident with time stamps and locations. Each individual caught disturbing the peace either dealt with by their five-man teams or followed from the shadows in order to mark a location for future arrests, after reinforcements can be acquired. Everything done by the books. Perfect discipline. The kind needed when a group of children was doing a grown man's job.

With the war underway, the presence of ninja within the Leaf dropped dramatically, opening up opportunities for greedy herbivores to try to take what doesn't belong to them while the carnivores are away. With the crime rate rising, the shop keepers and apartments in the most threatened districts were more willing to go to an alternative provider of protection. Kyouya and his Disciplinary Committee were more than willing to provide this, and at a quarter the rates that the village ninjas charged.

In the beginning, no one took them seriously, but after a year of running their private security business, people no longer questioned their effectiveness. Now they hardly had the manpower to deal with all the requests they got. The group as a whole had done what would be considered the equivalent of three hundred C rank missions, though some situations elevated into B or even A rank when the criminal underworld or foreign ninjas got involved. But even in these situations, they didn't turn to the official ninjas, as Kyouya himself would deal with the problem.

The Disciplinary Committee members were stronger, better trained and more focused than the average students. Each of them was on the level of a good Genin. And as Kyouya, Anko and Akane worked hard to make sure that no one got an over inflated ego and forgot their discipline, they didn't have any loose cannons causing issues in the field by not following protocol.

This was how you run a private military cooperation. The Hokage and his people should have been taking notes.

"It's almost a pity we are graduating." Anko said as she leaned up against the back of the couch, looking out through the window at their view of the city from their appropriated room on the top floor of the Academy's central building, just a few doors down from the Hokage's office. They didn't have a balcony, but it was the second-best room on the floor and one of the few with a couch. "What do you think will happen to the Discipline Committee once we are gone?"

"I guess it will just disappear." Akane said sadly. "I just can't see how it could work without Wakaikage-sama. It would even be dangerous for them to try to continue on without him. I suppose it could become a normal Discipline Committee… but it just wouldn't be the same without him."

"What are you talking about." Kyouya huffed. "I will not give up control over my Disciplinary Committee."

"Huh, but Kyouya-kun, your graduating. We all are." Anko said.

"I'm not leaving." Kyouya said in a voice that offered no room for debate. "I am not so weak that I can't perform both my duties here and my duties to the Leaf. I will finish the war quickly and return to my Academy."

The two girls stared at him for a moment before looking to each other. Then they burst into giggles. "That's our Wakaikage for you." Akane said cheerfully. "Even the entire ninja world is unimportant when compared to the discipline of the Academy."

"Hn…" Kyouya sighed as they laughed at him. "How irritating." He then got up out of his seat and headed towards the door, handing the documents to Akane as he left. She would file it away for later.

But before he could leave, Anko called out to him. "Hey Wakaikage-sama, aren't you forgetting your hat?"

…Those two…

How irritating.

* * *

"You didn't volunteer to be the boy's instructor?" Danzou asked Orochimaru at their secret meeting to discuss events.

"Hiruzen wouldn't have allowed it even if I had asked. He doesn't trust me the way he used to. I can't imagine way." Orochimaru said with a shrug, though his twisted smile said that he knew very well way the man didn't trust him. "Besides, I wouldn't be able to handle him. Beat him, maybe, handle him, no. He is a violent one, and he already doesn't like me. Kufufufu."

It was a pity, but they hadn't managed to find out anything about what made Maito Kyouya the monstrous individual that he was. Nothing in his blood was out of the ordinary, and obtaining samples of the hedgehog proved impossible, but in a way that was itself astonishing. Any sample quickly dissolved into a purple flame shortly after being obtained.

"Will you be able to make use of the Mitarashi girl?" Danzou asked.

"One way or another, yes." Orochimaru said with a confident nod and a smile that Danzou didn't like. The old man narrowed his eye at the Sannin.

"Don't go messing around with the girl's body. Hiruzen will notice if you do. Just take measurements." Danzou warned, knowing damn well the things that Orochimaru did.

It had been years since Danzou found out about Orochimaru's secret research projects and the attempts to continue the forbidden work done on Senju Hashirama's cells. Though rather than turning the man in, Danzou decided to allow the man to continue his work, and even assist him.

He knew that Orochimaru's goals were different than his own. Orochimaru was obsessed with immortality and eternal youth. Honestly, Danzou didn't care. He saw Orochimaru's research as a way of strengthening the village's chances of survival. If they could create more users of the Wood Release style, then they could counter the enemy nations' Jinchuriki, and deal with their own if it ever lost control. The greatest threats to the Leaf's continued survival would be all but negated.

Even if fifty homeless people and orphans had been thrown into the grinder of Orochimaru's experiments, if it could save the millions who called the Leaf Village home, then it would be worth it. One life to pay for a thousand. They were so close. To give up now would be to throw away everything that those who came before died to accomplish. They had already had one near success, in the form of Tenzou. It proved that it could be done.

"It would be easier to study the effects of the boy's training method if I also had the other pupil on hand." Orochimaru said casually. Danzou's eye narrowed threateningly. "And here I thought you trusted me."

"Never think that again. I use you and you use me. There has never been trust. You said it yourself, even a fool like Hiruzen doesn't trust you." Danzou spat before turning around and walking away, disappearing in a shroud of leaves.

Orochimaru's smile faded after the man was gone. He didn't like having Danzou breathing down his neck, trying to control his every action. Orochimaru didn't care about the survival of the Leaf. The Leaf Village was an overpopulated mess of a place that cursed with the stagnation brought about by people like Hiruzen and Danzou who insisted on keeping it alive. They couldn't even see the pointlessness of it all. How none of the people trained by the village would be worth half of what Orochimaru would create in his labs. Progress. What the world needed was progress.

He would create something great. Something that would stand up to the test of time.

For now he had to play by Danzou's rules, but that wouldn't last forever. That man might have thought that he had the snake captured, but Orochimaru was already working to slip through the man's fingers. In the meantime, he might as well make use of the resources that Danzou brings him.

The man always did bring him the best test subjects.


	7. Chapter 7

Uzumaki Kushina could barely contain herself. After three years of begging the Hokage to let her be a Jounin Instructor, she was finally being assigned a team of her very own.

Well, maybe not a team. Just one kid actually, but it was still hers and she would make sure that it would be a team that knocked all the others' socks off. Then they would regret not being a part of her team sooner.

Kushina wasn't dumb by any stretch of the imagination. She knew why it was that she hadn't been assigned a party before. Ever since she had become the Jinchuriki of the nine-tailed chakra beast, the clans had treated her like a giant explosive tag. No one wanted their children to be around her, especially not while she was on the battlefield.

While it had never happened with an Uzumaki, Jinchuriki had an alarming tendency to go insane and murder everyone around them. Sometimes the seals would even break, and the beasts would be released upon the villages they were housed in. Because of this, members of the ninja community who knew what she was avoided her like the plague, and with the start of the Third Ninja World War, the number of people who knew about her just kept increasing. 'Who is the Jinchuriki' was always the worst handled secret in the history of ninja. It seemed like just the weeks after she had first taken on the burden, everyone in the village and some people outside already knew what she had become.

It hurt, the way that the people who had been her friends, classmates and neighbors treated her, but Kushina did her best to not let it bother her. She still had Minato's complete love and faith, and the Hokage, Mikoto, Jiraiya and many others had also been nice to her. She remembered Mito's advice. She would keep love in her heart and let that drive away the hate. And if that didn't work, she would just have to show everyone that hated her just how wrong they were.

Kushina glanced down at the picture she had of the boy who would be her student. He really didn't look like much, an eight-year-old boy that could have passed for a girl if put in the right clothes. He sure was a scrawny thing. No matter how many times the Hokage had told her to take him seriously and that the boy was a talent that made Kakashi look like an incompetent, she just couldn't bring herself to believe it.

Well, whether he was strong or weak right now didn't matter. She would make damn sure he became the strongest Genin around.

Entering the Academy's gymnasium for the instruction of the new Jounin Instructors to their kids, Kushina immediately saw something that she couldn't help but to call out of place. A large group of fifty boys and girls, all dressed in black, standing at attention with chins up and hands behind their back. They were organized into five rows of ten in a group on one half of the room. Standing next to them, though in a slightly less rigid manner, was the boy who was to be her student, as well as two cute girls.

The two girls were in less regimental clothes, the purple haired girl was dressed in a sort of form fitting mesh bodysuit and a brown skirt, while the black-haired girl was in a looser bright blue combat dress, with a scrolls tie around her waist like a sash. But based on location she assumed that they were still a part of the group, even though their clothes were much more of what she would expect from Academy students.

What really caught Kushina's attention was Maito Kyouya himself. Or rather, how he was dressed. He was also dressed in black with his Leaf Village headband tied around one arm, however his jacket had the words 'I will bite you to death' written on the back in kanji, and on his head was a Kage style black and purple hat bearing the symbol for discipline. Perched on top of the hat was a small hedgehog like creature covered in metallic spikes.

There were some more ordinary kids around the room, but even they were unnaturally quiet, and they said as far away from the kids in black as possible.

"First time seeing the Disciplinary Committee?" Chouza chuckled as he came in behind Kushina, giving her a friendly slap on the back as he went. "The Academy sure has changed, huh? That Maito kid knows how to put the fear of death into people. I wish you the best of luck dealing with that one, Kushina-chan. If you need a good meal to recover from your troubles later, just stop on by, our door is always open to you."

"Huh?" Kushina said, not really sure how to take that. How in the world is that scrawny little kid supposed to have been responsible for this? …At least she would be getting a good meal later. Chouza's wife's cooking was the best!

Kushina went into stand with the other Jounin Instructors, ignoring how a quarter of them tried to move away from her without making it to obvious. Chouza stood next to her, also pretending not to notice, along with Inoichi. Inoichi wasn't really comfortable being around Kushina, unlike his two teammates, though that had less to do with the tailed beast inside of her and more to with the word 'tomato'. A word that the man had learned to never use in her presence again.

"Alright brats listen up." Shikaku said as he stood out in front of the new Genin. He wasn't going to be a Jounin Instructor, as he had too much work to do coordinating the war. Kushina didn't even know why he was there at all. The Hokage said it was to work with Chouza and Inoichi if shit hit the fan, but she didn't know what could happen at an Academy Graduation that could possibly require the intervention of the Jounin Level Capture and Interrogation Team. "You have all passed the Academy final exam, congratulations. I'm betting you feel very proud of yourself. Don't be. Until your Jounin Instructor says that you are a Genin, you are nothing more than a child playing pretend in the eyes of the village. They will give you your final test and if you don't pass it, you are going right back to the Academy where you belong. Fail it too bad, and you'll be kicked out of the program completely. Any questions?"

Kushina braced herself for the wave of complaints. She remembered them from her graduation. No one liked being told that even after passing the exam they might just be failed anyways.

So it was a surprise when the gym was completely silent. This wasn't natural and was starting to creep her out.

After that the new teachers started to introduce themselves, going down the line. Flashbacks to her introduction at the Academy played through her head. Hopefully this wouldn't go so poorly.

"I'm Uzumaki Kushina. I'll be the leader of the Leaf Villages new Fight and Capture Team, Team 18." Kushina said, giving a wide smile with closed eyes. It was her best attempt to display both friendliness and confidence, as she didn't want to make a bad first impression.

The relative silence in the gym was broken by murmurs. Her eyebrow twitched slightly, wondering if even the children knew about her being the Jinchuriki.

"Team 18." "She's going to be his instructor." "That poor woman." "Why isn't she running?"

…Huh?

"Kushina, look out!" Chouza shouted, giving Kushina just enough warning for her just jump backwards Kyouya took a swing at her. The air shook as his tonfa passed by where Kushina's stomach had been just a moment before.

Still a little off balanced, Kushina did her best to protect herself from the flurry of blows that came at her, taking hits to her legs, arms and stomach over and over again as he kept pushing her backwards. Then, after one hard hit to the stomach which knocked the air out of her lungs, the boy followed it up with an uppercut that knocked Kushina straight up into the air.

Kyouya jumped up to the roof, kicking off of it to propel himself downwards, prepared to do a large swing to finish the woman off. He was mildly surprised when she caught his swing with one hand. With gritted teeth she glared up at him, her expression full of anger. "You little BRAT!"

All thoughts of managing her strength were gone from Kushina's head as she took a swing at the boy who had attacked her for no damn reason. The boy blocked the attack but hit hardly mattered. Kyouya was shot backwards up into the stone ceiling, hitting it hard enough to blast him straight through onto a higher floor in the building. The children screamed as they ran to avoid the falling rocks.

It wasn't until she landed back on the ground with the kind of grace one would expect from a top female ninja that Kushina realized what she had just done. "…Hiiieee! I just killed my only student!" She squealed, clutching her head in both hands and messing up her hair. "How am I supposed to explain this to Minato?"

"Tomato Herbivore." Came a voice from above, snapping Kushina out of her panic. She looked up to see Kyouya standing there in the gap in the ceiling, the only sign of him having taken a hit was the absence of his hat. "For damaging Academy property, I will bite you to death."

…Huh?

How in the world did such a scrawny looking eight-year-old just tank her punch?

Kyouya jumped down straight at Kushina in order to continue his attack. Kushina prepared herself, but before he could get there, he was intercepted by Chouza's hand, enlarged by the Partial Multi-Size Jutsu. "Calm down Maito-kun!" The man shouted as he tossed the boy away, stepping between him and Kushina, with Shikaku and Inoichi following after him. "How about you at least try to get along with Kushina-chan."

"Out of my way Fat Herbivore, or I will bite you to death." Kyouya said coldly as he walked towards them.

"Grr… I keep telling you, I EAT MEAT!" With a shout of anger, Chouza's body expanded rapidly, until his head was brushing against the ceiling over thirty feet up. By now the other Jounin had started an evacuation.

"Shadow Imitation Jutsu." "Mind Body Disturbance Jutsu." Black coils erupted from Chouza's shadow as Shikaku used it to boost his own jutsu. While Inoichi's jutsu was not as obvious to see, Kushina assumed that the man was suppressing Kyouya's psyche at the moment.

As the boy's body control was taken away, the shadows closed in to bind him and finally Chouza wrapped his massive hands around the boy's body. A three jutsu combination the team used to retrain people on the Kage level.

"…He… isn't going to make this easy on us… is he." Inoichi grumbled as he stood with his hands in front of him, focusing on his jutsu.

"What a troublesome kid." Shikaku mumbled, his body twitching. "Even with you disrupting his mind, he's still trying to take over my shadows."

"…FUCK! This hurts!" Chouza screamed.

"What is it Chouza…? Nani!?" Inoichi shouted in panic, earning the attention of the other two as they turned their heads just in time to see an inky black mass covered in spikes wrapping itself around Inoichi, trapping him inside of a spike covered black ball.

"Inoichi!?" Shikaku shouted out to him, but before he could do anything, his own hand clenched into a fist and he punched himself square in the face, right under his right eye. The hit was so sudden and powerful at Shikaku was knocked clean out and his body crumpled to the ground.

"Come on kid, just calm down already." Chouza pleaded as his hands were slowly pried apart to reveal Kyouya standing there with a very unhappy look on his face. Two more of those inky black masses were on either side of him, digging their spikes into Chouza's hands and growing larger with every passing moment.

"Get out of my way, Herbivore." With the man's hand's pushed open, Kyouya dashed forward, slamming into the man's massive stomach. Chouza gasped, enough spit to fill a bathtub being launched out of his mouth before he crumpled down to the ground.

…Huh?

The villages top Capture Team had just failed to capture an eight-year-old. The only damage they did to him was the bruise on his cheek where he had presumably punched himself like Shikaku did.

"No more hiding, Tomato Herbivore." Kyouya said as he lifted his tonfas.

Kushina closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She really hated being called tomato and being called tomato herbivore was even worse. Her chakra buildup was starting to leak out of her body, causing her red hair to flow around her like it was blowing in the wind. "You know what, I'm your new sensei, so that means I the one who's going to be teaching you from now on! Let's start out with just want the pecking order is around here!" She shouted readying herself from a fight.

"Hmph." Kyouya scoffed before rushing in himself.

The two of them clashed, and the Academy shook.

* * *

*BOOM* *BOOM* *BOOM*

Hiruzen watched the ripples in his teacup each down the building shook under him. "Looks like my students failed to contain Kyouya-kun. I suppose him beating Ino-Shika-Chou was to be expected, but I figured Orochimaru would be able to tip things into their favor." The Hokage said as he got up out of his seat. "I'd better stop them before they bring the whole building down."

* * *

The gym was a wreck. The two had broken several walls and left some holes in the ground to go with those in the ceiling. Some of the other Jounin had braved the battlefield in order to retrieve Shikaku and Chouza before they could become unfortunate casualties, but there was nothing they could do about Inoichi in his monstrously heavy prison.

Clashing again in midair, the two blew each other apart, flying to opposite ends of the gym.

Kushina glared at the boy as he acted as though the hits had been nothing. This was getting out of hand. Kushina would need to do something about the boy right now, before the entire Academy was destroyed.

Calling on the power of her bloodline, she began to manifest the golden Adamantium Charka Chains behind herself. The chains were strong enough to stop even a Chakra Beast. She had no doubt that she could deal with this scrawny little brat.

Seeing her chains, Kyouya started to manifest his own black coils behind himself. As the shadows grew, threatening looking spikes began to appear on the sides of them.

But before they could unleash their attacks, a voice stopped the both of them. "That is enough!" Both paused as the Hokage entered the gymnasium, glaring at each of them in turn. "How about the two of you stop before you tear this entire building apart!"

"Hokage-sama… I… um…" Kushina started to stammer. She wanted to say that Kyouya started it, but that would seem awfully childish.

"Stay out of this, Old Monkey." Kyouya said to the Hokage, shocking Kushina.

"If you want to fight than do it later. I'll send Kushina-sensei to meet you at training ground forty-four tomorrow morning and you two can finish this there, without destroying any more of the Academy." Hokage told the boy.

Kyouya paused for a moment before lowering his weapons. "If she isn't there, I will bite you to death." The boy said, actually threatening the Hokage.

"Yes, I know." The old man said with a sigh, waving the boy off. Kyouya then turned and walked away, disappearing in a cloud of that black mass. As he vanished, so too did the orb entrapping Inoichi. "What a mess."

"Hokage-sama, I'm sorry, I…" Kushina started to awkwardly apologize, but Hiruzen just smiled at her.

"Don't worry about it. This went about how we had expected it to. Actually, I'd say it went better they expected." Hiruzen chuckled. While the destruction was unfortunate, it seemed as though Kyouya was looking forward to fighting with Kushina. It was the first time that Hiruzen had seen the boy excited for something. "Kyouya is one of the most naturally gifted individuals this village has ever had, but as you've doubtlessly noticed, he isn't very good with people, and he has a bit of an authority issue."

'Understatement of the century…'

"If he could be brought into line, or at least somewhat managed, he would be an outstanding asset to the Leaf Village. That said, everyone is too afraid to want to deal with him, and he is used to people being afraid of him." The Hokage said. "So, now that you've met Kyouya-kun, are you going to give up?"

Was she going to give up? Was she going to give up!? "Not a chance!" Kushina growled. "I'll teach that kid that he can't just call me a tomato and get away with it!"

Hiruzen's eyebrow twitched. That wasn't what this was supposed to be about.

"S..sensei?" Inoichi coughed as he tried to regain his breath. "I'm sorry sensei. I wasn't aware of my surrounds."

"Forget it. How are the others?" Hiruzen asked, looking around.

"No idea. He took me down first. I only heard the rumbling from inside of that thing." Inoichi said, shuddering. "That was not in the file."

"Add it later then." Hiruzen said with a sigh.

"I thought the three of use would be able to handle him even without Orochimaru, but I guess I was wrong." Inoichi sighed.

"Without Orochimaru?" Hiruzen repeated questioningly.

"He never showed up. I think he forgot about picking up his students." Inoichi said with a shrug. "The rest of the Jounin were too busy with the evacuation to help."

Hiruzen took a deep breath. "Dammit Orochimaru."

* * *

**A slight bit shorter than usual, but whatever, its a good self contained chapter. **


	8. Chapter 8

Training ground forty-four, or the Forest of Death, was originally a structure built in order to contain an area of tainted natural energy that was causing massive mutations in the local plant and animal life, before the Leaf Village was ever even constructed. The thirty thousand acres of land was nearly a quarter the size of the Leaf Village itself. It was full of so many different species that couldn't be found anywhere else in the world, many still yet to be discovered.

Seemed like the perfect place for a fight when you were worried about possible collateral damage.

No matter how out of hand the two of them got, no one would really care. Most of the forest had already evolved to be resistant to fire anyways, so it wouldn't likely be burned down, and they needed to do some population control anyways. The occasional survival training exercise just wasn't cutting it anymore and the giant centipede population was starting to try to chew through the cage's electric fencing.

He had met with Kushina in order to escort her to the meeting with Kyouya, just to make sure that the two of them got far enough into the forest that they wouldn't need to worry about the containment walls breaking before they started fighting again. Kushina had calmed down a bit from the day before, but her temper was likely to ramp back up quickly enough, and Hiruzen had seen just how much Kyouya was itching to continue this fight from the look in his eyes.

Kushina was too stubborn to give up, and Kyouya didn't even know the meaning of the word surrender. In his mind, you've surrendered once you are unconscious. They were also both durable enough to be thrown through a few of these ten-foot-thick trees without being slowed down too much.

So long as everything went as expected, then it would come down to a contest of stamina, and in a contest of stamina, no one beat an Uzumaki, and Kushina had usually high stamina even for an Uzumaki, and that had been before she had become the vessel for the nine-tailed fox.

It might take four or five hours, but she should come out on top.

The only worry would be that the fighting escalated until one or the other was using lethal force, or Kushina neglected to keep the nine-tails in check. For this reason, Hiruzen was going to keep all evaluable forces on standby until the fighting was over. Hiruzen trusted Kushina but… she did have a temper and it was better safe than sorry.

By the time they reached the first gate into the encloser, Kyouya was already there. He was laying out on the grass, hands behind his head, staring up at the clouds. However, the moment they touched down he was on his feet with tonfa's ready and running towards Kushina with the intention of taking a swing at her. Kushina seemed equally prepared to attack him as well.

"Hold it you two! Wait until you're in the training ground and away from anything people would care if it gets broken!" The Hokage shouted at them. Kyouya didn't seem to be listening, but when Kushina stopped he did as well. The Hokage when over to the gate and punched in the code to open it. "You can fight all you want, just keep it away from the walls and the tower in the center of the training ground. Other than that, just try not to actually kill each other."

"Yes, Hokage-sama." "Hmph."

The two entered quickly and started moving deeper into the forest as Hiruzen closed the gate behind them. "Best get to the communications room." He said with a sigh. "Let's just hope this works."

"Some of the men are taking bets on how long this is going to take." Orochimaru said as he appeared in the clearing. "I'm going with two and a quarter hours. What do you think, sensei?"

"Four hours minimum." The old man huffed. "Did you scatter your snakes to keep an eye on the situation?"

"Of course. I wasn't going to miss out on the opportunity to get data on a fight between these two." Orochimaru openly admitted his motives. "I've never managed to catch either of them fighting seriously. Today seems to be my lucky die."

"Remember that we are here to contain a possible disaster, not for a science experiment." Hiruzen said, reminding the man of the priorities. "Also, make sure the Council and Jounin Commander gets a copy of any results."

"Of course, sensei. Kukufufu." Orochimaru chuckled as they both left to the observation station in order to observe the battle.

* * *

"As your wonderful and very forgiving sensei, I am willing to overlook your earlier behavior if you clean up your act right now." Kushina said with arms cross and head held high. She was still mad about the day before, but she recognized that if the boy was to be her student, then she couldn't have them at each other's throats all the time. She could be the bigger person and let everything that happened slide.

Of course, Kyouya wasn't interested at all. He lunged at her with his tonfa. Not an attack meant to hit, just a nonverbal indication that it was time for her to shut up and fight. Kashina back peddled and dodged the attack, but still hadn't completely given up on diplomacy.

"I'm seriously!" She shouted at him, but he only raised his tonfas at her. "Grrrr, I am your Jounin Instructor. If I say so, then they will chunk you back into the Academy! So if you want to keep that ninja headband you are going to have to do what I say!"

Kyouya paused and started to put his tonfas away, gaining a sigh of relief from the young woman. Until he untied his handband from his arm and threw it at her.

"Wha…what do you think you are doing!" Kushina shouted as she caught the headband, her eyes wide. "Put this back on right now!" The headband was a symbol of unity of love for the Leaf Village. A sign that they were all united as brothers who had promised to live and die for each other. One did not simply discard their headband lightly.

Kyouya pulled his tonfas back out and smirked. "Make me."

Kushina began to tremble as his blood began to boil. "You arragent little…" She growled before putting the headband into her waist pouch. "THAT'S IT! I'M GOING TO KICK YOUR SCRAWNY LITTLE ASS AND THEN I AM GOING TO SEAL THIS NINJA HEADBAND TO! YOUR! FOREHEAD!"

* * *

Kyouya was thrilled.

He hadn't felt like this in a lifetime. Not since the last time the Sky Omnivore entered into the Ultimate Dying Will Form. His heart was pounding as he stood in front of an opponent who could perhaps have entertained him even at his peak.

It was a lot like fighting the Boxing Herbivore.

Her punches possessed as much force behind them as his had, and she wasn't bothered at all with his normal blows. Her scraps and bruises would heal before his eyes in just a few seconds. Her chakra flow would gather around the injures and then steam with rise up out of her body. After that, it was like she was never hit at all.

He originally wondered if she had an active Sun Flame, one strong enough to be used without a catalyst. But he felt like it was somehow different than what the boxer did, though not entirely unfamiliar. So very familiar.

"Water Bullet Jutsu!" Kushina's water jutsu blasted a dozen large shots of water down at Kyouya who quickly called on his Cloud Flame to use Roll to create a solid black barrel between him and the attack. The water splashed on its surface, but the force was easily absorbed.

After that, he completed Roll's body as a giant spiked ball and shot the flame animal at the woman with the full force of his flames. A normal person would have dodged, but the red-haired woman stood her grown.

That was when Kyouya saw it, and everything clicked.

The same chains as before materials from the woman's back, golden yellow with a bit of orange mixed in. They seemed semitransparent, as if not entirely real. The chains shot out in front of her and formed into a sort of net, causing a shimmering barrier to be formed.

Roll slammed into the wall with the kind of force that could blow down a house, but the chains stopped it cold. Then, Roll's body slowly began to pale, the purple flames receding, as his body turning to stone. The process was slow, much slower than it had been before, but there was no doubt in Kyouya's mind as to what it was.

Nullification.

The woman had a variant of Sky Flames. The same Flames of Life as the Sky of the Arcobaleno.

Well, even if it was Sky Flames, or something equivalent, they could only nullify so much Flames at one. Kyouya jumped up into the air and placed his hand on the back of Roll and pumped the guy full of flames, slowly increasing the size of the hedgehog as well as the intensity of his flames.

The violet fire burned so bright as to be blinding as an orb the size of large elephant pressed down on the woman's barrier, which slowly started to crack.

"Not happening." Kushina growled as she put more of her own power behind her barrier, adding more of the golden chains.

The point of impact began to crackle as the two powers struggled for supremacy. Then the entire thing exploded.

The blast was strong enough to cause the surrounding trees to crack and burst into flames, though when the smoke cleared, both Kyouya and Kushina were standing there as if nothing had happened.

Though Kushina quickly realized she was surrounded, six of the smaller hedgehogs were flying about in their tiny spiked ball forms, radiating purple flames. Kushina took to the trees, using the incredibly thick branches and trunks to block the spike balls.

"Coming at me with numbers huh!? Well two hundred can play at that game!" Kushina shouted as she performed the proper hand signs. "Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu!"

Hundreds of small popping sounds layered on top of one and other as the entire forest in front of Kyouya filled with smoke. Once the smoke cleared, he found himself facing roughly two hundred of the angry red-head.

""""ARE YOU READY TO GIVE UP NOW!?"""" The woman and all her clones shouted down at Kyouya.

"Hmph." Kyouya scoffed before temporarily putting away his tonfas and performing his own hand signs. "Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu!"

Again with the sounds of popping and the smoke and then there were two hundred Kyouyas standing across from the Kushinas.

""""YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME."""" The Kushinas said with slumped shoulders.

""""I WILL BITE YOU TO DEATH.""""

* * *

"*YAWN* How long have they been at it?" Shikaku asked as he leaned back in his seat, watching the ceiling fan going around.

"In five more minutes, it will be two hours." Inoichi said from his position by the computers. "And this is with them burning chakra with all those Shadow Clones. I understand Kushina-san, but where in the world does the kid get all this stamina from?"

"Training." Danzou said from his own seat. He had also been called on in case of the worst-case scenario, though he would admit he wanted to watch the two fighting all the same. "Maito-kun has done nothing but eat, sleep and fight since the day he was born. Having large amounts of physical strength and stamina is natural after pushing yourself as hard as he has for so long. And it has only been growing faster since he started training using Shadow Clones. While this might seem unusual to you, his talent isn't unheard of. Senju Hashirama and Tobirama, and Uchiha Madara all had similar levels of strength and stamina, even without a Tailed Beast."

"Yeah, but they were adults, and descendants of ancient and powerful bloodlines. I'll be the first to admit that the Nara Clan's line isn't that great and the Maito family is only three generations old, if you include the kids. The Maito's are a hard-working bunch, no one can deny that, but they aren't wells of natural talent." Shikaku said with a sigh.

"I think a new law should be passed. The Naras are no longer allowed to have children with people outside of their Clan." Inoichi said flatly.

"Fuck you, Inoichi!" Shikaku shouted at the man, throwing a wadded ball of paper from the sandwiches they brought to eat as they waited and watched.

"Jiraiya also possessed a similar level of chakra and physical endurance." Orochimaru said with a bit of a hum in his voice. "It is what allowed him to survive his mistakes when becoming a Sage, as well as all of the beatings he received from Tsunade for peeking on girls. While talented in his own… unusual way, Jiraiya wasn't from any ancient bloodline. Not unless an exceedingly powerful man visited that brothel."

"Yeah, well stamina and chakra aside, they should be starting to get hungry right around now." Chouza said as he glanced at the clock and saw that it was around noon. "I hope this doesn't go on too long. I only brought so many snacks."

* * *

Kushina was starting to get hungry, which was only making her more irritated. She should have had more than just one bowl of Ramen Ichiraku's diet instant ramen that morning. She'd been trying to watch her weight, so as to not put on any pounds while Minato was off fighting the in Land of Earth, but one cheat day couldn't have hurt.

She couldn't help but to glare at Kyouya, who was pushing her back with some of his Shadow Jutsus. If it weren't for those shadows, this fight would have been long over. While her Adamantium Binding Chains were incredibly powerful, they were more suitable for binding someone than dealing damage, and she had limited mobility while using them. If she got close enough to the boy to slap her chain on him, that meant she was close enough for his shadows to skewer her. Each of them had realized that so long as they kept there mobility up, the other bindings weren't that big of a threat. But it also meant that each lost a key weapon in their arsenal.

*Growl*

She needed to figure out a way of finishing this fast. The boy was starting to show some signs of tiring, but it would still be a while if it was purely a contest of stamina.

She glanced at Kyouya, while keeping his shadow and the flying spike balls in her peripheral, and nearly screamed in rage as he saw him pop open the handle on his tonfa. A large brown pill rolled out into the palm of his hand and the boy quickly ate it.

"Was that a food pill! You cheating little brat, who said you could use something like that during our fight!" Kushina shouted at the boy.

Kyouya looked up at her before looking back down at his tonfa and dispensing another pill. "Catch." He said before throwing it up to her. Kushina was so shocked that she almost fumbled it.

She stared at it for a moment, completely stunned. "You… you're really giving me this?" Kushina asked. Part of her wondered if the boy was trying to poison her, but that seemed a little too contrived.

"I can't have you losing your fangs on me. Our fight hasn't even started, Chained Carnivore." Kyouya said.

Kushina blinked at him and then smiled. Maybe the boy wasn't as much of a brat as she had thought. "Alright then, but don't start making excuses when I beat you." Kushina said before biting into the pill.

Food pills weren't the tastiest thing out there, but they were effective, with just one pill being enough to keep a ninja on their feet for three days and nights of boring guard duty, though the side effects leave the users completely exhausted once the pill's effect subsides.

Or that was how a normal pill worked. After taking her and feeling the almost instantaneous effect, Kushina realized that the one she had just taken was a higher-grade food pill. The kind that don't have side effects, or risk of overdosing. …They also tasted like mud.

Well, at least she wouldn't be hungry anymore.

"Roll." Kyouya said as he raised his hand and called on another one of his hedgehogs. Kushina had no idea how he kept summoning them without a seal. She'd never heard of any bloodline that allowed for such a thing, but she also didn't want to ask. People would probably just tell her to read his file and that thing was just too big for her to want to read.

Reaching up, Kyouya plucked one of the quills from the hedgehogs back, which ignited into a bright purple flame. He then took the quill and drove it into his own forehead, and then Kushina's jaw dropped.

Bright purple flames exploded from the boy's forehead as his entire body started to give off steam. His shirt and pants both went up in flames, though luckily his boxers survived the sudden serge of power. The grass around him shriveled up and ignited from the heat rolling off of the boy's body.

Kyouya looked up at Kushina, who was staring down at him from a tree branch. A wide grin was spread across his face and his usually narrowed eyes were now fully open. Seeing him looking so happy while nearly engulfed in purple fire… was weird. "Carnivore. I will bite you to death, even if it kills me."

Kushina looked down at the now nearly naked boy, one eyebrow twitching. "Oh great, another pervert."

Though her casual manner disappeared when Kyouya kicked off the ground and the earth exploded underneath him. He rocketed towards her, moving at triple his earlier speed and she barely had enough time to block before he hit her, sending her flying backwards into and through three separate trees, each over fifteen feet thick, and then down into the ground.

"Hss… Alright, that one really hurt." Kushina hissed as she pulled herself out of the ground and tried to shake the dirt out of her hair. Her arms sported rather light first degree burn marks where the boy had hit her. The burns were already disappearing by the time she had gotten back to her feet. "After this is over, I am going to take the longest bath."

She looked up at Kyouya who was staring down at her, grin on his face, and waiting for her to rejoin the fight. "Now, stop holding back." The boy said with confidence.

So, he had known that she wasn't fighting at her full strength all along. Kushina hesitated for a moment, wondering if she should answer his bait. But something in her told her to just go with it. That this was what she needed to do if she wanted to reach him. It went against everything she had ever wanted before. She had hated letting people know what she was. But just this once...

"Stop holding back, huh?" Kushina said, taking a deep breath and clenching her fist. Reddish orange chakra started to leak out of her body as she drew on the Nine Tails Chakra. "Well, you asked for it!"

* * *

**Someone seems to have gotten confused by the time skip, so let me just say it right here. Hibari was born around 22 years before the series starts. When he was 2 year old, it was 20 years before the start of the series. Now he is around 8 and it is 14 years before the stare of the series. So it is currently 2 years before the birth of Naruto. Kushina is 22 at the moment. Plenty old enough to be an instructor.**

* * *

**With a much better understanding of the seal than Naruto ever had, Kushina is much more adapt and willing to use the nine tails chakra.**


	9. Chapter 9

Ninjutsu was forgotten entirely.

The simply wasn't any time to focus one's chakra and preform hand signs. The fight had devolved into a slugfest between Kushina's fists and Kyouya's tonfas, with Kushina have the ever so slightest advantage in terms of speed and strength.

The fact that it was only a slight advantage was a shock. Even with her only drawing a little of the Nine Tails' chakra, not even enough to manifest the first tail, an eight-year-old shouldn't have been able to keep up with her. Even without the fox's power, she was one of the village's top power houses, an equal to what Tsunade had been. With the red chakra, she could count the number of people in the village capable of keeping up with her speed and strength on her fingers of one hand. Most of the Jounin wouldn't even be able to keep track of her with their eyes. They weren't moving at Minato's speed, but they were still far above normal.

She wanted to say that it was like taijutsu sparring with her husband, but that wasn't true. Minato was an angles fighter, using his speed to get around his opponent's defenses and attacking from the best possible angle to get at their vital points. Kyouya fought a lot more like she did. While there was incredible amounts of skill and finesse involved, at the end of the day, it didn't matter where you hit them as long as the blow connected. Some of the blows between the two of them would and totaled some Hidden Village's defensive walls. Kushina would know, because she had done it before.

In the war, she had been used like a highly effective explosive tag to take down fortress and even small armies. All the Jinchuriki had. Usually, only people at the Kage level could challenge her once she started to tap into the demon's chakra. To be able to fight so freely with the boy was exhilarating. But it also frightened her.

It wasn't until Kyouya's clothes were burned away that Kushina realized that he wasn't like her. As durable as he was, his injures didn't heal within seconds of receiving them. His body was covered in the accumulated damage from their persistent fighting. Yet he didn't care. He just kept getting up, ignoring the cuts, the bruises, the possible cracked bones.

She wanted to beat him, but she didn't want to continue hurting him.

"Stop fighting like a Herbivore and bite me!" Kyouya roared, swinging his tonfa down at her.

Kushina moved to block, but at the last moment the tonfa reversed its rotation, spinning around to slap away the guard and slam into her chest, rocketing her backwards to destroy even more of the forest. This time, Kyouya didn't wait for her to recover. He came down at her swinging both of his tonfas.

At the last moment, Kushina's arms snapped up and grabbed onto the metal shafts of the boy's weapons, stopping them dead in their tracks, though the wind from the attack still blasted away the air around them.

Focusing the red chakra at her hands, Kushina turned up the heat. As the metal of the tonfas melted, Kyouya abandoned them, pulling away from Kushina before she could launch a kick at him. His jump propelled him up into the air over forty feet, where he manifested a black mass before him to act as a platform to stand on.

"So, ready to give up know that I broke your toys?" Kushina asked, hoping that he would.

The excitement on the boy's face was enough to tell her that wasn't happening.

"Roll, Cambio Forma." Kyouya said as the Hedgehog once again appeared, only to turn into pure purple flames and jump onto Kyouya. The bright light momentarily blocked Kyouya from view, but when it died, Kyouya was standing there in a black trench coat with the familiar character for discipline and matching black pants. His straight black hair seemed to have grown a little and become wild, and he had a new pair of tonfas in his hands… these ones were on fire.

"Well, at least he's wearing pants now." Kushina sighed before the boy once again attacked her. A hiss of pain escaped her teeth as the purple flames burned her skin, and the woman drew on even more power to coat her arms in order to protect herself from his flames and speed up her healing.

He was charging at her again, so she jumped backwards to dodge out of the way, only Kyouya swung his weapon anyways. The small tonfa suddenly increased in length, extending until it was over a hundred feet long in a fraction of a second. Kushina barely managed to duck underneath it as the flaming pole ripped through its surrounds like sword through wet paper before shrinking back down to its normal size.

That style of attack continued for three more swings before Kushina was forced to jump upwards into the air, using blasts of her Chakra to preform midair dodges in pseudo flight. Feeling as though he was only wasting energy, Kyouya stopped and changed tactics, slamming both tonfas into the ground and cranking up the flames. Everything that had been previously knocked over erupted into flames.

The ground itself seemed to be on fight, releasing enough smoke to completely obscure Kyouya from vision, if it weren't for the unnatural purple flame on the center of his forehead. Kushina thought that this detail was simply a miscalculation on the boy's part, but the smoke screen was never meant to cover his approach, just his attack.

A small metal object came flying out of the straight at Kushina's head, causing the woman to attempt to slap it out of the air on pure instinct.

*Click*

"Handcuffs!?" Kushina shouted as she saw the black metal object attached to her wrist. "Of all the perverted fetishes…"

The handcuff glowed purple and Kushina blinked in surprise when one became two, and then four, and then dozens. They worked their way up her arm before she could think and then spread over her entire body, binding her arms and legs to her side and incasing her in metal.

'Maybe I should have read his file.' Kushina thought as Kyouya grabbed onto her bond body and started to pull her down towards the ground headfirst, spinning rapidly around until they formed a sort of tornado.

*BOOM*!

The earth shook as Kushina was thrown into the ground with the force of a meteor, creating a massive crater in the ground. A crater big enough to fit a large house in.

Kyouya stood at the edge of the crater, waiting for the dust to settle. He was pretty sure that the attack wouldn't have been enough to kill the Chained Carnivore. Perhaps it would have knocked her out, but even this felt unlikely to him. Strong as she had been, he felt like she was still stronger than she let on.

His suspicion was confirmed when the dust was blown away by a wind of power, accompanied by the sound of metal being torn to pieces. He momentarily shielded his eyes from the flying dirt, but when he lowered his arm, he saw that she was finally taking things very seriously.

Kushina was completely surrounded in the darker red chakra, the stuff forming around her into a distinctive shape, with two long ears on her head and two tail like masses behind her. She looked at Kyouya with slitted ruby eyes and gave him a kind smile. "You did really well, but I'm afraid this is the end Kyouya-kun."

Kushina was calm and looked onto the small boy with affection. This was the only safe way to use the Nine Tails power. One cannot harbor any negative emotions in their heart, lest the beast take advantage of them, and Kushina did not hate Kyouya. He was a strange child, violent and standoffish, but she did not hate him. And though the Nine Tails power, she could sense that he didn't harbor any negative emotions towards her as well, save for perhaps a mild annoyance. Even when faced with her chakra beast transformation, up to its two tailed state, he still had no fear of her. Knowing this, it actually made her happy.

It had been an interesting experience, sparring with him, but now it was over. At this stage, only another Jinchuriki could stand up to her. Even Minato had been forced to retreat when confronted with a Jinchuriki who was in control of his inner demons, it was something that surpassed even the Kage level.

But Kyouya, stubborn little boy that he was, didn't give up easily. He charged her with his tonfas and struck out.

Kushina didn't even move. Just raised her arms and casually blocked the attacks, showing the boy the sheer difference in their strength. He lashed out with an impressive combo of blows, but none of them so much as made Kushina move.

Finally understanding that it wouldn't work, Kyouya backed away. For a moment, Kushina though that the boy might have finally given up, but instead, he started to chuckle. "Thank you, Carnivore, for finally giving me something where I can truly go all out against." One of his tonfas disappeared as he reached over with his free and pulled a needle out of the other, one that was glowing with his purple flames. "It's been a long time since I've done this." Kushina didn't know what to do but stand their and stare as once again Kyouya stabbed himself in the middle of the forehead.

The boy's eyes slowly closed, and the almost insane smile faded into a neutral expression. The steam stopped pouring from his body and the chaotic flame on his head became calmer and even shrank slightly. It almost looked as if he was powering down, but Kushina's instincts told her otherwise. He wasn't powering down. All the wasted energy he had been giving off before was now becoming focused. Not only that, he seemed to be drawing in the energy around him, using it to fuel him further.

"Before, I had removed all internal restraints, moving me into what is called Dying Will Mode. Now, I have removed all external restraints as well, letting the energy truly flow freely. This is Hyper Dying Will Mode." Kyouya said, his voice smooth as silk. The boy opened his eyes, showing that they had changed from silver to a brilliant purple.

Kushina stared at Kyouya for a moment before sighing. "You really are something else. Will you finally be satisfied after this?"

"Yes." Kyouya replied with a nod as he got into a fighting stance.

"Alright then, just don't get hurt too badly." Kushina replied, getting ready herself. Then after a short moment, their battle continued, and the world shook.

* * *

"This wasn't in the file! None of this was in the file!" Inoichi shouted as the entire observation building shook as if there was an earthquake.

"Add it later!" Shikaku shouted back at the man as he reached over to the control panel and pressed the intercom button. "We have a code orange, all forces are to immediate deployment! Move into positions and set up the containment barrier!"

Code yellow had already been called out a while ago, at the first sighting of red chakra, and was the signal to prepare for combat at any moment, but now that there had been the first sign of a real Chakra Beast Transformation, they were going to pull the plug on this operation. If the boy wasn't yet satisfied with having Kushina as his instructor, then tough, they weren't going to risk the fox getting lose.

"What the hell you two, can you be any more troublesome." Shikaku grumbled as he glanced at the cluster of monitors, though half of them only displayed static. Everything was being destroyed out there. Even the surveillance hawks had been forced to retire by the wind coming from the ferrous battle on the ground. They had all known that Kyouya was on the level of a high tier Jounin, one that could even threaten a Kage, if not taken seriously, but none of them had expected to be pushing up against a Jinchuriki. The two of them were fighting at beyond even the Kage Level. This was beyond what any of them had expected.

Not even half of the techniques he had used since taking that food pill had been in the files. The boy had been holding back on them all this time. A child had been wearing the kiddy gloves while playing with them in order to make sure HE didn't over do it.

How humiliating.

"Hahahaha!" Orochimaru had broken down into laughter. Not his usual snobby 'kufufufu', but actual hysterical laughter.

"Get a hold of yourself, Orochimaru. We are deploying." Danzou scolded the man. He had expected some of the weaker willed Chunin that they brought to bolster their numbers to break, but not the Legendary Sannin.

Orochimaru grinned at the old man as he pointed at one of the computers. One of the ones that was displaying a next to unreadable chart about some measurements. "This machine was put in place to monitor the flow of the natural energy within the compound to check for any extreme irregulates, and right now, it is saying that a large amount of the surrounding natural energy is being absorbed by Kyouya-kun." Orochimaru quickly explained to Danzou, whose eye widened when he realized what this information was implying. "It seems like the comparisons between him and the First Hokage were spot on. The boy has just gone into a flaming hedgehog-based Sage Mode."

* * *

**Again, shorter chapter, but not very many good cut points around. Next chapter should be the conclusion for this part.**


	10. Chapter 10

She was fast and strong. Even with Hyper Dying Will Form, Kyouya was at a lose when it came to keeping-up with her. It was only the increased speed of his reaction-times, the way he could sense the entire world around him and moved to the flow of energy for attacks yet to be thrown that allowed him to stay in the fight. This cheap knock off version of the Old Boss's Hyper Intuition which Kyouya had developed to deal with genjutsu uses in his previous life.

It felt right, him being here, nothing to restrain him. This was his place in the natural order. He was free to use his fangs and act the way a Carnivore should without worrying about damaging the world around him. He felt like a wild animal that had finally managed to escape the zoo. For so long, Kyouya had not just been a big fish in a small pond, he had been a massive shark in a bathtub. He couldn't even bite properly, out of fear of just home much damage he would do.

A Carnivore, afraid to bite. Unable to embrace his true nature. He hadn't even realized just how stifling this world had been for him until he was given this chance to let loose.

However, his senses where strong enough to know that it wasn't the same for the Chained Carnivore. Even now, she pulled her punches. He could feel the disrupted flow of her energy every time she only put half her heart into the attack. She was biting at him, but she wasn't using her teeth. Why was this Carnivore acting so strangely?

Was she even truly a Carnivore at all?

She had been too assertive, too sure of her place at the top for her to be an Herbivore. But she wasn't acting like a Carnivore at all.

It reminded him of the Old Monkey in some ways. The Hokage had been a natural born Carnivore, but he had desired so badly to be an Omnivore that he had ripped out his own teeth. Now Kyouya wasn't even sure what to call the old man. It was exactly like how the Ninth had been. It was so pathetic that at times it made Kyouya want to gag. Though he couldn't look at the Hokage and say for certain what characteristic he was missing. What it was that made his old Sky an Omnivore while the Old Monkey was closer to a toothless wolf trying to eat cabbages, no matter how many times they made him throw up.

That had always been the thing about Omnivores that fascinated Kyouya, he hadn't understood them. They had always seemed to have an even better understanding of the natural order of things than even he had. This was why he hadn't minded so much occasionally following the lead of the Neo Vongola Primo, so long as the man didn't crowd him.

Kyouya's tonfas grew and shank as he attacked the woman, regardless of the distance between them, with Kushina doing the same but lashing out with her crimson chakra, creating long arms made of the stuff to try and grab him. Quick as a flash, Kyouya conjured up three layers of Roll's Spiked Shield between him and the hand. The chakra hand burned through his shield layer by layer in mere seconds, but it slowing down the advance of the chakra enough for him to dive out of the way and throw a pair of spiked handcuffs at the woman, which replicated in the air to become two dozen. More hands split out of the chakra arm and grabbed the cuffs, melting the metal in an instant.

This red chakra stuff was as dangerous as the Bastard Herbivore's Flames of Destruction. It was nothing like the Flames of Life she had used earlier in her chains. Yet whenever her arm whipped about, catching Kyouya in the side, it didn't burn him. He didn't even feel any danger from it.

The Flames of Life were still present, mixed in with the red chakra, keeping it under her control. Kyouya could feel it with each clash… it was a nostalgic feeling.

Kyouya's breath was becoming strained, though in his Hyper Dying Will state, no one would have even noticed it. Unlike the Sky Omnivore, neither his body nor his flames were made to keep this up. Even with the boost in his reserves granted by the Food Pill, he was quickly burning through all of his stamina. At his current rate, he would only last another two, perhaps three minutes. Not that he cared. He would keep fighting until he dropped unconscious.

However, his plan to fight to his heart's content was cut short when a massive purple barrier appeared around them in the forest. Both he and Kushina stopped to looked up at it in puzzlement. "The Eight-Pointed Purple Prism? Why?" Kushina said not understanding what was going on. However, Kyouya understood all too well.

Someone was trying to get in the way of his fight.

Sure enough, moments later fifty ninja appeared out of the forest, surrounding the group, including the Hokage. It seemed as if all of them were Chunin, Jounin, or ANBU, and they all had very serious looks on their faces.

"This has gone on long enough. I insist that you two stop this mock battle immediately." The Hokage told the two of them. Kushina looked at the old man with surprise, while Kyouya glared at him in annoyance.

How irritating.

* * *

Kushina was at a lose for words as she realized they had been being monitored. Probably the entire time. She also realized exactly why the barrier had been placed.

The Four-Pointed Purple Prism would have been enough to contain even a Kage level individual. This Eight-Pointed version, it had been made to contain her. Beyond the fifty that were in front of them right now, they had to have a least another eight Jounin supporting the barrier. They had prepared all of this in case Kushina lost control.

"Hokage-sama, it's fine. I'm in complete control. You don't need to…" Kushina tried to reason with their leader.

"You are not welcome here, Old Monkey. Leave, or I will bite you to death." Kyouya said, his voice still having that silky quality it had since he had first unlocked his Hyper Dying Will Form, though his words were threatening. It was odd, hearing such things from such a peaceful looking face.

The Hokage frowned at Kyouya, his body tensed. "Have you not had enough yet? Has Kushina-sensei not proven herself to you yet? This fight is pointless, and it is starting to become a risk to the village. As Hokage, I am telling you to stop."

"Hn. Pointless? Not all my questions are answered yet. I will not stop until they are, or until I collapse." Kyouya replied with a scoff, raising his weapons.

"Kyouya-kun…" The Hokage grumbled as he stared at the boy.

"Hokage-sama, just let us continue a little longer. I won't lose control. Please trust me." Kushina said, giving the man a short bow. The nine-tails chakra still coated her entire body and when she looked into the old man's eyes, she saw him flinch. Her eyes had been changed by the transformation into the eyes of the demon. How old have the Hokage been when the Nine Tails had nearly destroyed the village?

She could feel his unease and his guilt. She knew he had always attempted to look past the Demon and see Kushina herself, but faced with those eyes, he was consumed with unease.

Still, his unease was easier for Kushina to handle than what the others were feeling. Worry, fear, disgust, even hatred. It hurt her, feeling such things from these people. The Leaf Village was supposed to be a family. It was the only family she had left. Yet so many of her fellow ninja feared her.

Even if she knew that their fears won't unjustified, it still hurt.

"Kushina. As much as I want to respect your wishes, this fight has escalated too far. I am responsible for the safety of the entire Leaf Village, and I can't risk that… that things get even more out of hand. Please, return the seal to its normal state." The Hokage paused before mentioning the nine-tails, glancing at Kyouya. He knew that while there were few clans that didn't know about the Leaf Village Uzumaki, that it was kinder to Kushina to keep the number of individuals who knew about it to a minimum, lest even the children start to run away from her in fear.

Honestly, he might as well not have bothered. Kushina could feel it. Kyouya wouldn't have cared about the nine-tails. He knew something was up, the entire squad of ninja turning up wasn't exactly subtle, but he still didn't fear or hate her. His annoyance only grew because their fight had been interrupted.

Still, the Hokage had a point. While before she had been confident on her ability to control the Nine-Tails' chakra, now, with her heart being confronted with the fear and mistrust of her village, she had too much darkness closing in on her heart. While there still wasn't any immediate danger, it would be best to simply call it quits, even if Kyouya wished to continue. "Kyouya. I'm sorry but…"

Before Kushina could finish her sentence and start powering down, four wooden beams shot up out of the ground, wrapping around Kushina's body. Before the woman even had a chance to register what was going on, she experienced an explosive serge of pain as the Red Chakra was forced back into her and her seal was being closed by the Wood Seal's effect.

"What are you doing!? Stop this at once!" The Hokage shouted, seeing the shock on Kushina's face.

"Ignore that order. Finish repressing the Tailed Beast's Chakra." Danzou told the ANBU boy who was holding out his hand towards Kushina with his fingers curled in, the Fuinjutsu symbol for sealing marked into his palm.

As her vision darkened and her ears began to ring, Kushina felt a massive wave of killing intent wash over the group. The wood that had latched itself too her was torn into splinters, cutting off the crushing feeling in her stomach and allowing her to fall to the ground.

"For harming this Sky, I will bite you all to death."

* * *

'This was not going as planned.' Hiruzen thought as he saw Kyouya standing protectively in front of Kushina, a look of pure contempt in his glowing purple eyes as he put out enough killing intent to make Danzou take a step back.

"For harming this Sky, I will bite you all to death." The boy said, the fire on his forehead growing rapidly until it covered his entire body in the same manner that Kushina had been wearing the Tailed Beast's Chakra just moments ago.

He raised his hands and one of his hedgehog summons appeared between them. Then, all of the purple flames seemed to gravitate towards the small creature, which rapidly absorbed them into itself and began to glow so bright that they all had to shield their eyes from the glow. "Reverse Spiked Sphere Form."

The hedgehog let out an ear-piercing scream and started to expand out in all directions. Hiruzen barely had enough time to notice the way that the spikes ignored Kyouya and Kushina, absorbing them into the ball as it grew, before they were completely out of sight.

"Run!" Someone shouted, not that anyone needed to be told. For some, even moving at full speed, the spiked wall was still on their heels, with the Chunin barely out pacing it. However, it wasn't until they started to reach the edge of the Eight-Pointed Purple Prism, and the sphere didn't show any signs of slowing down, that they realized they were in serious shit.

"Bring down the barrier! Quickly!" The Hokage shouted to the Jounin who were maintaining the barrier, bringing them out of their shock soon enough to let down the wall and start running themselves.

They all ran until the spiked wall started to slow it growth and stop. By that time it was roughly five miles in diameter and had broken through the ceiling of the training ground, a wall of random debris from all the tree, rocks and other objects pushed up by the massive sphere rose up fifty feet high in some places.

"What the hell happened? Where is the troublesome woman and brat combo?" Shikaku asked, scratching his head. He had been part of the group maintaining the barrier, along with the rest of his team, and hadn't seen the events that had transpired.

"There was a bit of a breakdown of order and the boy snapped. As for where those two are, they seem to have been absorbed inside of this… majestic creature." Orochimaru said as he studied the wall with something like awe. "Fascinating, to be able to grow to such a size, and so quickly. It's comparable to the outer limits of the Akimichi Clan's Super MultiSize Jutsu. And it has a semi-porous nature that can pick and choose what it wants to pass through it. On top of that, it produces some form of what I believe to be senjutsu-like chakra. I wish I had the means of studying it on me."

"If its like the smaller version that the kid locked me up in, then it will probably be mostly hollow inside. Still... oxygen ran out rather quickly in that thing." Inoichi said with a small shudder at the memory of nearly suffocating to death in that pitch black ball. He was in the T&I department, and that thing still gave him the willies. "This wasn't in the file either. Why do we even have a file?"

"Should we try to break through it?" Chouza asked.

"Be my guest. Though I think the boy used up all of his Chakra to create it. With him out of Chakra and the Jinchuriki no longer using her inner demon's power, I don't think there is any threat anymore. I'm guessing that this situation will be resolved without any more input on our part. The fighting is already over." Orochimaru said with a shrug. "By the way, two hours twenty-three minutes. Looks like I win the pot."

"Fuck you Orochimaru! This doesn't count! All bets are off!"

"Danzou, Kushina wasn't out of control. There was no need for that." Hiruzen said angrily.

"The woman was already coated in the Demon's Chakra. The Seal was weakening and the Beast needed to be suppressed." Danzou counted. "I won't chance the Beast getting out just because you don't want to hurt the woman's feelings. That monster is dangerous, you should know that better than anyone."

The Hokage narrowed his eyes, before turning his head back to the massive dome in front of them. "Kyouya-kun reacted in order to protect her. Seems like even though everything went to hell, it all worked out in the end."

"So operation 'Out Foxing the Hedgehog' was a success then. Good to know. I accept all the credit and give myself the day off tomorrow in congratulations." Shikaku said, sitting down and yawning. "Inoichi, you're okay with accepting the blame for all the shit that went wrong, right?" His teammate glared at the lazy genius. There was going to be a lot of paperwork in order to cover this.

The Hokage coughed into his hand and glanced over at Danzou. "Danzou, as punishment for disobeying direct orders, you can be in charge of cleaning up the damages here. Make sure to get the paperwork all filed out correctly."

Danzou flinched and started to grumble under his breath. "Damn you, Hiruzen." Why couldn't the bastard be merciful and just kill him instead?

* * *

When Kushina's head cleared, she found herself in a much different place from where she had been before. She was lying on an endless plan of reflective glass that seemed to straight out to the horizon in all directions, and over head was a crisp blue sky with fluffy white clouds. It wasn't until her vision cleared completely and she squinted at that distant sky that she saw the spikes implanted in it. There was no sun or any source of light, but the place was brightly lite, without any sign of shadows.

"You're awake." Kyouya said, surprising the woman, as she was still trying to process their surroundings. His fire was gone and the clothes from before had dissolved, leaving him in nothing but his boxers. Not that he seemed to have noticed or cared.

"Yeah, what happened?" Kushina asked, as she stood up and looked around. "What is this place?"

"They sneak attacked you. I drove them away. We are inside Roll." Kyouya said simply.

"Is that so? Thank you, though I don't think they meant any real harm." Kushina said with an awkward smile. "You didn't hurt any of them too bad, did you?"

Kyouya didn't reply. He just stared at her, long enough for the silence to become uncomfortable. When he finally did speak, it wasn't an answer, but a question. "Why?"

"Huh? Why what?" Kushina asked with a tilt of the head.

"You had the power to crush me. To put me in my place. Why didn't you use it? Why?" Kyouya demanded.

"Well, because I didn't want to hurt you." Kushina admitted, a little sadly as she looked over his body and saw all the blood, bruises and burns from their battle. She noticed he was favoring one of his legs. The boy had done a good job of guarding his head, at the very least.

"Why?" Kyouya asked again. "Why would you care?"

"Why? …Because I'm your Jounin Instructor. That makes us a team. We're like family." Kushina explain, her face going soft as she did so.

"…Family?" Kyouya slowly repeated before starting to chuckle, surprising Kushina. "It's been a while since I hard that word used like that. You really are a lot like him. Fine then, I will accept you as my new Sky. Just try not to crowd me, Omnivore."

Then with an amused smile… Kyouya collapsed. The dome around them broke, leaving Kushina allow with the boy in the middle of a barren patch of land five miles wide, where there had once been a dense forest.

Kushina rushed to check on the child's condition, but he seemed to be stable, just sleeping peacefully. Kushina couldn't help but to laugh at the sight. "You know, you actually look kind of cute when you sleep, my little genin student."

* * *

"Alright, so we've updated the kid's file." Inoichi said as he glanced over the new thirty pages of text that were being added to Kyouya's already blotted file. "His bounty has gone up to rank B. Still would have to be a moron in order to take it."

Normally, rank 'C' bounties were for people at the Chunin level, 'B' were the lower tier of the Jounin, 'A' was high tier Jounin, and 'S' was for Kage level ninjas. While an eight-year-old with a B-rank bounty sounded insane, it still wasn't doing the boy justice.

"You sure some of these nicknames are a good idea?" One of the man's cousins asked him as he glanced over the papers.

"They are what they are. I didn't make them. Lets just hope that the kid doesn't find out." Inoichi said with a shrug, though he couldn't help but to snort at a few of them.

The Tailless Demon, the Purple Dragon, Spiky Death Incarnate, the Child of Hyper Death and of course, the Hedgehog Sage.

* * *

**They just don't understand the beauty and power of this massively obese hedgehog the way Orochimaru does. What a majestic creature.**


End file.
